Episode #107 Why Humor Is the Most Underrated Sales Tool | Will Aitken

Can being funny actually close deals? Will Aitken — viral sales content creator, co-founder of Sales Feed, and CEO of WillAitken.com — joins us to expose why humor, humanity, and just the right amount of chaos might be the deadliest tools in modern sales. We dig into cold outreach tactics that actually work, the myth of the “perfect tone,” why most outbound fails miserably, and how being yourself is more effective than AI-polished pitches.

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Transcript

This is Bridge the Gap powered by Revenue Reimagined, the podcast where we dive into all things revenue. Each episode, we bring you the top founders and go-to-market leaders to challenge how you think about growth and help you bridge your biggest go-to-market gaps. I'm Adam Jay. And I'm Dale Zwizinski. 

As always, thanks for hanging with us. There's a million ways you can be spending your time and we're grateful for you choosing to spend it with us. Be sure to check out our newsletter if you want the show notes and tactical advice on how to bridge your GTM Gaps. Let's get to it. 

Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by none other than Revenue Reimagined. And today, we have a really special guest with us. Probably the funniest person to ever join in our presence. It's Will Aiken, co-founder of Sales Feed, CEO of WillAiken.com, and probably the only person I know who's helped more sellers get better by making them laugh first. From going viral with cold call skills to now leading training strategy and keynote content for B2B Brands Around the World, Will has built a go-to-market platform on clarity, humanity, maybe just a little bit of chaos, Will. 

So we're going to dig into what works in modern sales, where most reps are going to screw up, and how humor, if you do it right, not wrong, is probably the most underrated go-to-market weapon out there. Will, thanks for joining, man. Well, that was quite epic. I like that intro. 

You said that the intro is the best thing you did. That was pretty impressive. 

Listen, record it, take it with you, use it as your walk-on for any events that you do. I'm good with it. You don't even have to give me the credit. We'll just let you take it. Heck yeah, I will. Thank you. 

Hey, Will, thanks for joining. So one of the things Adam was just talking about is the funniest people in B2B are also the smartest. So let's talk about tone a little bit. Why does humor, like, punchiness through messaging, sales messaging, flow through the best? Like, why does that, like, break the barriers? 

I think humor is a universal language. There are obviously some nuances, culturally, but I also think humor is often a sign of awareness, and awareness sells sometimes as well. So not everyone can do it, but it's also a sign that being funny, if it's perfectly personal to it, you're showing up real. And I think showing up real is one of the things that cuts you the noise these days. So let's say humor, more so being yourself. It just so happens that I am sometimes funny. 

I think one of the things you just said, though, not everyone can do it, right? Like, we have worked with, like, we had a client in higher education, and one of the sellers was, for lack of better terms, very, very, very regimented. Now, if this guy tries to get on a call and crack a joke, like, it's going to be so obvious that it's fake. And, like, you're naturally funny. I'm naturally the loud, boisterous sales guy. Dale's naturally a little more low-key. How do you balance that while still stepping out of your comfort zone to meet your buyers where they are? Because not every buyer wants, like, listen, like, Dale and I said this when we started RR, like, I might close a deal with my, you know, boisterous personality, but when we get in the deal, the buyer might just jive better with someone who's more mellow. How do you find that balance and stay true to yourself? 

I think you can... It's not so much changing yourself, but it's just toning down to mirror, eventually. You're right, every time you jump on a call and you know someone's not going to jive with the sarcastic jokes and the playful banter, at which point, I'm not going to just completely change who I am, because that's just acting. 

It's almost like a form of lying. But I'm just not going to go as heavy on the... being... not going as loud, let's say. I'm going to tone it down a little bit. That's all. 

Because, you're right, there are definitely opportunities where I've probably lost them because I've been a bit too much of that. I love it. Yeah. But I also think it's good, especially when you... it's a little bit different when you work for yourself, right? Because when you show up as yourself and you work for yourself and you're the one who's going to be helping deliver on the services, etc. 

Well, then if someone's not driving with you, that's for a good thing. You've established that there is no fit. When you're selling software or selling a bar for another company, I think at that point you have to be a little bit more careful of how to go up. But still, be true to yourself because otherwise you're just going to get tired, burn out. There's a lot that comes from performative... 

Dale and I have had a couple of people that don't get our band art and they just look at us like, are you guys for real? 

Okay. Yeah. I think I'm going to go over the other guys. Who's the other guy you're talking 

about? Well, when did you realize people would take you more seriously if you led with humor? Or even respond to you? When was that flip point for you? 

Hmm. I'm not sure there was necessarily a flip point. I think you know when it's working because you get a room full of Zoom people, a Zoom meeting full of people laughing. You know you're in a good kind of spot for a good deal. Now, I don't think relationships alone close deals. They certainly help because they get you faster to truth transparency and people just being full of government information is going to be helpful to you to establish it quicker and build trust quicker. So when it's worked you can tell. You know, it's almost... and it ultimately makes it a lot more fun. I think where it became really clear was when I was doing more and more content and then using that in both my sales process and to attract customers as well. 

Do you have sales leaders that were like, do you have sales leaders like, no, you shouldn't be doing that. I can't... like that's not the way we do it. 

No, I've been honest since I was... I think it was a encouraged anything. It seems a competitive differentiator. So I think if I had anyone spot my hand, I definitely had a few meetings where I've been like, I've had the self-awareness and coaching from others to be like, maybe that one wasn't the time to use that. 

I'll do that. I'm also aware that sometimes being funny, as I said, it's a push-pull, right? So it's a balancing act. 

You're going to push away as many people as you attract, essentially. There are definitely cases where whether it be in a sales process, I have blown up a deal trying to be too cheeky. And there are times where the stuff I found online has probably lost me as many opportunities as it got me, but the ones that got me were really good fit. And the ones that it lost me probably would have never bought from me anyway. 

So I want to go off script for a second. I think what you just said is really important. It might have cost you opportunities, about a one-year opportunity, but there's this balance of remaining true to yourself, right? You probably, and I'm probably similar, I'm never going to be the guy that's going to come in all buttoned up and perfectly prim and proper, never crack a joke, and never curse. I know my audience, and one of our partners does not like the cursing as much as Dale and I, and I know when I need to tone it down, but I tell customers the only way that I am the typical CRO is I curse like a sailor. And if that makes you uncomfortable, generally speaking, I can tone it down, but if cursing as a whole makes you uncomfortable, I'm the wrong person. 

If the funniness makes you uncomfortable, we're the wrong people. So I love that balance that you call out of mirroring, so to speak, but at the same time, remaining true to who you are. Because if you don't do that, it is lying. 

Yeah, I think people get this idea of mirroring when it's been taught that you're meant to be apt like the other person, right? I think it's more so just matching the other person, but staying true to yourself. The pace, the language, the mood, it's more those things, and you can change all those things without changing who you are as a human being. 

There's a reason I have a collared shirt hanging in this room. Certain clients, I have to have it. Other clients, you don't. You mirror. There you go. 

I don't know what you're wearing. And then you're like, why are you wearing a collared shirt? 

You look so weird with a collared shirt. Yeah, it's just more like such a nose one. I put it to go with Adam Jay. 

It's very, very rare that I put one on. On the flip side, it's very rare that Dale is not in one. And if you get Dale in person, it's very rare that he does not have a sport coat on. Good to know. All right, let's shift gears a little. Let's talk about cold outreach, right? So all the rage, all the topic, and we now have filters and spam and noise and AI and AI, SDRs, and just load it into clay and send out 100,000 emails. What, in your opinion, is working in outbound right now that most people are too lazy, too scared, or just don't want to try? 

So although a lot of the problems are being caused by things like math automation, I think there's still a place for those to help you speed things up. I just think most people misuse them. 

Most people see it and go, oh, yeah, we'll use that for everything. I think that the thing that works really well for myself and some of the reps of coaches is just the things that that automation still struggles to do well, which is oftentimes like video, in person, actually showing up, making calls yourself, obviously. Like all those things are really where I see the difference between the folks who are struggling or averaged and the great folks, the people who are willing to lean into the things that other people want, basically. But I think video is probably the biggest untapped opportunity right now. 

Every rep I tell to use video, they're uncomfortable. Well, you get everything comfortable, stand out from the damn noise. 

Yeah, I think it works because it's work is one of the things I've been saying lately. 

It works because I'm writing that down. 

Yeah, it's work because it's work. I don't know if I thought of that or it was a comment or something like that. I'm going to give you the credit for it. I'll take it. Yeah, 100% rather down. Give me one of those images of a beach. It works because it's work. Will Aitken, 2025. 

That will be the post this week. I'm in. 

I think with the whole calling and videos especially and showing it in person and getting FaceTime with folks, it again turns back to what we were just talking about, about leaning on the things that make you you. It's really hard to do that with emails and DMs, frankly. So the more involved the channel is, the more you actually separate yourself against all the rest of the chat. 

I love that. Yeah, it's interesting because as we go deep in AI, I just find people taking the same lazy tactics that they've taken from using sales law after outreach. Now it's just like, oh, look at this N8N post that someone put up and let's try to replicate that. 

And then all of a sudden, actually Jake, our other business partner, put up that replete actually deleted someone's production database. So stuff's going to happen that you have no control over. And so it's just laziness. 

I think that's it. And Pies can tell us as well. If you put 0F into the stuff you've said and I will reach out to them with, we'll make sure you didn't put any F into reading. 

We just fired an outbound agency that for clients, literally their messaging was, you know, the equivalent of, hi, Adam, because you're the CEO at Revenue Reimagined, I saw that you struggled from this. Oh, and PS, I see that you live in West Palm Beach. What is it? 2021? Get it together. Garbage. Garbage, garbage, garbage. Yeah. So I also think a lot of that stuff, you can be a little bit, 

you can be a bit more forward with the product forward stuff when you actually put it into doing their work. If so, you send someone a video and they know it's you because you're outside walking. It's not someone of those AI avatar things with the mouth that kind of moves a little bit, waiting to get a video. No, if I still am sure there's a place for them, I think it's probably not what people try and use it for, but you can be, you can get away with being more upfront because you're actually putting effort into the average. They know it's for them because frankly, how could you possibly record 40, 30 second videos where you call out the one out and be a smiley human being, you know? 

That's really the question that people have. Is this for me? So when you do things that can only be for them and it doesn't mean personalizing what's saying, hey, West Palm Beach, wow, nice. It's more like just putting effort in and then people will give you effort in hearing what you have to say. 

But to your point, there's different kinds of personalization, right? Like I absolutely think there's a place for AI to go scrape 10K reports and scrape LinkedIn posts and listen to podcasts and all of that stuff. And that has its place. 

That's very different than what you're talking about where I even if it's 30 seconds, I took the time to show you that I'm a real human being standing out walking outside. Hey, Will, it's Adam. Just wanted to really quickly thank you for the connection request, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or accepting my connection request, blah, blah, blah. Done. That is much more real than, hey, Will, I see that you know, you have these really cool mouth pads that I happen to have one of on my desk and like something that everyone else can write. 

There you go. I mean, like, no, everyone could write that because I've only sold 50 of them. 

But you know, I only have 49 of them. I think the AI and automation stuff is cool. It does have its place. I actually, in fact, when I send videos to people, it's a step in a sequence for a list that I've built using AI because I want to make sure I'm talking to my people. And I still want to have 

the highest chance of that message actually resonating with them. So I'm still going to use all the 10k scraping and the lemon, you know, job ad keyword searches and all that. But like doing the extra work with it after you've done that, like video, like actually making calls. All right. That's where you're going to stand out. 

It's really the last mile. Like you think about like that last mile is like super important to ensure that you like are standing out from everybody else. I guess the one 2% that's that last mile is going to do the work. 

And if you don't do that last mile, then what the hell are you being paid for? 

Yep. 100% Well said. I'm curious where gap prospecting came from. Is that something like where you're like hanging your quina and you're like, let's do gap prospecting. 

It wasn't quite hanging with it. It took me a year to convince him to do it. But you know, a few years ago when I first got into the sales, I read gaps selling through my interview process and did change a lot of the ways I thought about things. Which was a very well written book that was a page turner, which I can't say about a lot of sales books. I've read and I was going to write this thing anyway. Frankly, I don't talk to you in this but gets on a podcast. He went and listen to his too busy. 

But he wasn't my first pick. I was like, Jen, come on, Jen, just try it with me. Jen doesn't read, so she didn't feel like it was true to herself. 

I was like, alright, he doesn't read. You're my rebound. Do you want to do this thing? And then he said no. And he was like, I'm going to let someone else put their name on a book that I wrote. And he also had his question. He was also questioning the effects of the cold outbound as well. But he did some of his own research and then 

eventually I gap sold him on the idea, I guess. And he said he was open to it. And then I committed to probably a year of work with him. So yeah. How'd that progress? How'd that progress? 

Interesting. I mean, they've been writing a book for the past decade. 

So yeah, I think when there's two people, it's a little bit different. You know how you feel about stuff. I think it actually makes it a lot better. Even when we disagree, it means that we come to a conclusion that it actually often does better than either one of us on its own. 

Yeah, because you live in a silo. Like you're in this little echo chamber. 

You're trying to write on your own. Perspective, right? I think we can do with a more perspective in our lives. Yeah. Which is why I'm also like, be careful with fucking using chat to be too much. Because that thing, you go to it with perspective and then it starts validating it. And it'll love and crap out you. 

What would you rather use? It would just be a word of warning to eventually. So like, yes, you're great. This idea is amazing. Oh my gosh. 

And then you start a new chat. It's kind of the same thing. It's like, this is kind of shit. All right. If you feel about this, I write this and then you're like, don't validate me. And it fucking flips 180. It does a 180. Yeah, you're right. 

That's crap. Even with the don't validate me, like it amazes me that all of these, whether it's check, GPT, Gemini, Claude, none of them can understand a couple of prompts in my opinion. 

Number one, the don't always validate me. And no matter how many times you tell it not to use those damn M dashes, I could put it at all caps, 17 times. I'm still getting the fucking M dashes. 

I'm like, I like to like tournay a little bit when it does that. I'm like, what the hell? Read that back. How many M dashes? I'm like, man, really, really, it's like talking to one of my kids or like being 

like, I was like, do you want to try again? Are you sure? You know, but yeah. 

Point being perspective is good. And that's why I'm glad I got keen and involved in it and not just learn some language. They would have been crap, frankly, like a virus. 

Last question on outreach before we shift gears. So a lot of outbound agencies or outbound sellers or DVRs will tell you the goal of outbound, the goal of cold email is to get a reply, any reply. How do you measure what is actually a good message versus I got a reply? 

Yeah, you say it's almost like the meme of sales off scones. This sequence is amazing. It's got a 20% reply rate. And all the replies are like, I rate out of all 30 times. 

I got a 92% open rate because all the spam checkers open your email. 

All right. So here's my take on that. Objections and replies, even negative ones are good when they are the truth. Is that they're not interested? And that's the truth because they've got some new place that actually works really well. They do not have the problem that you have. 

They don't have the problem that you have to get yourself. Also, that's still a positive response. That's still a positive result, should I say. Right. Because you essentially, you've categorized not a fit. 

That's okay. Put them in the back burner. You've got more people to go after, right? 

Ideally. But the issue is, I think a lot of those aren't always the truth. They're just ways to get rid of you and hope that you don't message again. Same thing on the phone. Same thing when someone tells you, oh, no, we have something in place. 

Everyone's got something in place. Is it working? Did you hear what I said? Or did you just have that response ready for me in the moment you picked the phone and had this in my BSA of school? 

All right. Now, would you be cheeky enough to say that to someone of like, Dale, of course everyone has something in place. 

No, I would always say like, yeah, I'd be like, yeah, I actually would have guessed you would have been doing something. Right. 

They send out invoices with your buddy Adam right now. I hope that you said he invoiced at least, right? If you were, and I'd be really worried and probably wouldn't be a good fit for me because how are you going to pay for the software? But a lot of people, is it that you feel like this is already doing it well enough and you feel like that's not an issue? Or is it more so that I've kind of got you a really rough time here and it doesn't matter what this is about. You just don't plan to have this conversation. 

Like just to like, basically give them a couple more options and get to the real truth. Right. And you know, if it's the latter, that's okay as well. Like, sure. Okay, cool. 

Is there a better time for me to go back? What would you prefer me to reach out to you the way you can give this time and thought? Yeah. 

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The truth is the goal, not a meeting, not a positive response. Just the truth. 

You're up next, Mr. J. 

No, I'm not, sir. 

Absolutely not. I'm happy to take your next one. No, it's good. I see you switching shit up. That's good. 

He's always trying to throw me under the bus well. 

Adam, is there a doc in the background being changed right now? Like, shit. He said, true. We're going to have to lie. 

There is a doc. Of course, some show prep. I did not change it. Hand to God, I have not touched the doc since we started. Dale just, I don't know, maybe he needs his glasses changed or something. 

Yeah, hold on. Hold on. Okay, now you can see. 

I'm not going to say, wait about it. Yeah, take the glasses, man. Make Adam's jaw better looking. That's right. Right? 

I have a face for radio well. 

That's why he's an introvert killer. What's the biggest mind shift that your clients go through when they forget that you're this world-class trainer that you're executing on? What's the biggest mind shift that your clients go through when they're like, I think I know everything that I have and then they bring you in to kind of do their training and then at the end of it, they're like, shit, I didn't know what the hell was going on. How do you get them to do that mind shift? 

It's funny because so often people come to me go, yeah, we need help with cold cooler. We need our reps to get cold cooler. I'm like, oh, you know, I think it's part of the thing. If you're doing a sequence or in kind of multi-gen outreach, I'd be curious to see you. You might be like, yeah, you can see them, but they're great. 

They're great. They're awesome. They're amazing. They're fucking awesome. That's the best thing else ever. A plus A star, you know, the top of the class kind of emails. Every of them like, these are the worst fucking emails I've ever seen in my entire life. I don't know how to do 

that. I feel like there's not anyone's fault, but like it's also probably maybe trying to keep scope down as well sometimes. We hear that you, I would say it's often almost always more than what they thought they needed. It's mind shift. You only get that by asking questions, taking a look and then you can't just be like, yo, your emails suck. You have to be like, well, it's taking a look at them and I had this thought here, like for example, and then show them and you go, do you see how that would work? And then like just even showing the off them times, but it doesn't come from me like asking questions live on the course. 

Often times with me looking afterwards. Yeah. And then that's great news for them. And to me, frankly, it does mean a little bit high scope sometimes and it does mean that they get better results from the entire outbound idea. So just one part of it that they thought they had the issue with. 

It's very difficult. Well, we have a similar challenge where it's like, why am I going to pay you X dollars or Y? And it's like, we're like our sales process is okay. It's like, and then you get in and you're like, why do you have that stage there and where's your exit criteria is like the same thing that we get into and then we'll go in and we'll do an audit because we've learned where like, we can't do a scope without like, we can't do our complete thing without an audit because your scope will just increase because when they find you're good, then they're just adding a bunch of shit. 

You're like, it's a scope every day. Every day a bunch of stuff for three basically. And then you're just getting to work and then doing a half hour job of it. Yeah. I'm like doing half hour stuff. 

You want to do work you're proud of. Yeah. Another common one is like, oh, we just need help without that. But then I find like, they're like, well, a lot of that family's we book are unqualified. 

And then I'm like, okay, why aren't they qualified? Let me listen to a cool. And then I'm like, oh crap, crap, what the hell is this cool? Right. And then it's like, there's always something else. It's never the one thing that's all I'm talking to you with. 

And often times the other dominoes. More than impact. Yeah. It's a domino. You have a clear how to ask the question of an outbound lead. They're like doing the classic qualification or just treating them like they've got all the interest in the world just because they agree to a call from a code. I'm convinced most of the problems people think they have are symptoms of really the root of the problem. Yeah. The root of the problem is much deeper. 

And when you, when you fix like the symptom part, you're like, or you see the symptom part, you're like, okay, you think your problem is leads, but your problem is really work flows in HubSpot or something's getting over. Like it's so different. 

In everything. I mean, what about the Dale? We had the customer and will this will resonate with you. They were ready to fire the entire sales team. Sales team can't close anything. Every call they get on, they can't close. 

Listen to a dozen calls, go back. It's not a sales issue. It's a frigging ICT issue. We're talking to the wrong people. 

That is a fundamental. I won't even blame marketing. That is a go to market issue that needs to be looked at at a much higher level versus let's fire six sales reps that they can't close deals. How about you put qualified people in front of them? 

Talk wrong as well. Like I go in sometimes and like, oh, outbound just doesn't work at this company. We've got too big of a customer. I'm like, how many, I'm like, I just did an ICP map and it looks like you probably sell to a few, you know, 20,000 customers fit your criteria. 

Like what do you mean you don't have enough customers? I look at the emails and I'm like, okay, what kind of enablement have you even given them? They're like, well, we have this VP from X company who I won't name and they came in and tried outbound. They had six outbound sellers. 

No one did anything. I'm like, can I see some of the stuff please? And I'm like, okay, right. Yeah, no shit. That didn't work. It was straight from the 2019 playbook. 

All right. But like the willingness to this right sound golf because they tried something once as well as another thing I see a lot as well and tried it badly for one. Like imagine me going out and being like, all right, I'm going to be a pro league baseball player. Swing and miss and swing and miss and swing and missing your route. I'm like, well baseball is a crap sport. Yeah. It couldn't be me. It couldn't be me because I tried three swings up there. 

See that guy? The baseball is the problem. Not me. Come on. I love it. I love that. Well, is there anything that you've been asked to do like as part of scope grief at a sales org that you've just turned back and said, nope, ain't going to do that. Let's cause some friction. 

One of them it wasn't okay. I could think of two examples. Number one, I did a playbook for someone. They're like, can we make it pretty? Come on. 

You can hire a designer to make it pretty. That's why I ended up doing is when I'm fucking vibrant board design. I'm like, there you go guys. Well done. I was saying that not you. $50. I hope you're happy now. The sales reps will never read this thing ever again because now we can't change this in a PDF. They'll want to give a playbook because you add and change it as time goes on as well. Come on. Number one was most scope grief issues. 

I like to try and get those out of the way before I agreed to do work. That way, very clearly. If you do enough work up front, I think you can avoid a lot of those issues. Number one was like, oh, well, we want to do. There was an issue where they wanted to do two separate two-day workshops. 

One in London, one in New York for the Amir team and APEC team. I was like, okay, two days. They're like, we want to do your one day rate. I was like, I'm staying for two days. It's two days away from my kids. That's two extra days I'm not in my office doing all the other work I have to do. I'm going to have to charge more for that. They were pushing back and they were like, let's just do one full day. 

I'm like, you ever tried to keep fucking 20 people's attention for a full day? I think the two days is the right thing. You're just going to have to pay more for it. Come on. Let's be realistic. 

When it's the last time you went to a full day workshop and were happy at the end of it and not thinking about all the work that you just ignored for a day. There's a balance here. The thing is the balance can just cost you some more money and that's okay. Would you rather it be done well or just done quickly at a lower price? 

I love that mindset. We talk about that all the time. We're not trading time for money. You're trading outcomes for money. Do you want it done right or do you want it done fast? Yeah. And fast could be right, but you want it done right more than anything else. 

I saw a classic slide that I saw someone made it like a 3D printed one of fast, good, cheap. Yeah. And you can't have two without losing one. The point there was just like, I'm not going to do it. 

That's all right. Sometimes pushing back in that way shows a level of respect because a lot of those people wouldn't do it, but wouldn't push back. I'm like, yeah, I'll do it. I think that's the benefit of just being in a spot where you just don't need any business. Don't need the business. Sure. I'd like to do a 50 grand deal of that, right? But I'm going to be all right. 

It's always good to flip it on his head too. Would you do this work? If you had two days worth of work, would you do it for a day? Day rate? The answer would always be no. That's a great point. So it's like, okay. Why are you trying to nail me? You're the guys that don't want to have the problem, not me. 

It's like, I'm having some work done. I'm about to tell this house going to be weird to walk away from this room after being here for so long. But there's a drywall guy, right? I'm getting him to the patch and things in that hole. I said that I want you to get it done in a day for less because you know that drywall takes time to dry. 

You know? Like, no, no, no. You don't need to get it in one day. It's one day's work, not two days. And he's like, yeah, I'm not going to be able to stand it and then put another coat on that. 

Just get a great analogy. You'd be like, I would do one coat for you if you want the last, but I'm not going to do the 

one one day because just my wife is a little like crap. 

Well, let me ask you. So you said at like this intersection of content, tech, sales, psychology, I think you do a little bit of all of it and you blend it all relatively well. What's a shift that's coming in your mind that most go-to-market leaders don't see yet and are going to be totally blindsided by? 

I just think there's just, the bull is going to drop at some point. There's just too many solutions on the market. It's nothing that the GDM teams can control personally, I think. But I'm surprised every day that things even exist sometimes. 

Yeah. I'm with you there. Is AI going to kill the creativity or is it going to make it 10, 20x more important? 

My thoughts on AI, I'm a big user of AI, but I just don't think it's there yet. But I also see people vibe coding stuff and I'm like, and this is better than a lot of products in that space that you just made this for, right? I think that has created a huge influx of solutions that's almost like highlighting how bad of a problem is that there are so many solutions out there that just do like this one random thing that you didn't think would be a problem when you could actually go make this. I think the challenge is that a lot of people out there are just not very aware. Like we talk about this every day, like tech, vibe coding, all this great stuff. But like a VETS office who need like a VET time appointment management system to run all that patients through, then I'll start there going, I'm not going to buy that CMS or whatever it's called. 

I'm going to vibe code it. Yeah, I'm going to vibe code it. They're not doing that, right? But yeah. But then like at some point 

that was got to go drop whether it's more of a game or emails and the solutions come cheaper and cheaper and cheaper until what now? 

I think B2B tech is an anomaly in itself because everyone's trying to get out in front of it. But you're right. Like the blue collar working even like a managed services. We have a couple of managed service clients and they were behind in the tech game, right? They were in the GTM tech game. I should say they were behind like no outreach, no sales off, no, like they didn't have any of the shiny objects. And so actually, Those companies still exist? Sorry. Yeah, I know. 

The fun is you can immediately have a real coach feel like, yeah, I'm very confident we can do some big things in the business. Yeah. 

So you actually jump like technology. So like they're going from like more manual stuff all the way to AI. Like they're just skipping like a whole generation of tech debt that they don't need to have anymore. So it's very interesting. 

Actually, I think I actually believe that B2B tech is going to hurt themselves with the way they're doing things because all this vibe coding and everything. Look, I've done a bunch of stuff. We were like some of our clients are asking for something. It gets it to a point, but it's not production ready, potentially stuff. 

It's like it will break at some point. You're replic, you know, blowing someone's production database away. Like there's things that happen that you're going to you're going to struggle with even on the vibe coding side. Like vibe coding is only going to get you so far. You still need once again that last mile to get the work completed. So yeah. 

Yeah. Yeah. I think the things I'd really like to replace the like the social media is out there, but the issues of that is like the limitation is servers to huge databases and that's that. Yeah. I know every man can every person can. 

I can just wish LinkedIn would be a better place and just fired garbage content place. It's become. Yeah. 

I think that the recalls that is the fact that the LinkedIn team doesn't have a fucking clue. Yeah. Yeah. The most out of touch team I think in the entire world. Yeah. Based on what's going on. 

I'd like to call that a hot take, but I don't think that's a hot take. I think everyone outside of LinkedIn, if we were to all get on a call in regardless of where you are on the influencer creator sphere would say the exact same thing. 

Who the hell are you building for? Yeah, if you're going to go build a procurement software, right? Let's say you want to build like a vendor management software. What would you be doing? You'd never ever, ever had a conversation with a procurement person. 

Now you'd have one on and fucking payroll consultant. He's going to tell you, you know, this is a problem that always happens to me and I'd love a way to fix that. All right. Like, but then like, they're like, nah, nah, we know procurement people that better than they know themselves. We got this. 

Don't worry. Let's bring in like a, bring in a sales person to consult with us for a little bit. Let's try and build this for sales. And then like, do you mean they're going to be like, what? No, I need to see what, how many vendors I have. 

When the contract terms are up and the sales, that's going to be like, yeah, yeah, let's try and increase the spend in the vendor. It's not going to work, is it? Anyway. 

Okay. Well, let's, let's, you know, for some rapid fire. One word answers. 

One word answers. I don't know about one word answers. No, I could do less than 10 words. Let's try one word. We've never played that game before. 

A couple of these may have a couple of words, but what's the GTM opinion you're scared to say out loud? 

One word. No. 

Under 10, under 10, under 10. 

No, I'm not scared to say anything out loud, Dale. You know, you know, I'm going to fucking throw up. Mark things sucks. Sorry about that. I love it. 

I don't, I don't disagree with you. Well, who's someone in sales that doesn't get enough credit? What's the one title that who doesn't get enough credit? Probably a solution, but then you know. 

If you need one, I think a lot of people don't. They're just lazy. 

Okay. So going back to the LinkedIn thing, what's one piece of sales advice that should be to lead us from LinkedIn forever? 

Let me just go on LinkedIn and get some inspiration real quick. I haven't subjected myself to the pain today. Just the entire idea that like, you can't give a demo on the first call, you don't give a price on the first call. Why is it the first call that matters? It's more so like, don't do that until you understand them. I'd say, right? 

It's a criteria, not necessary on which call. I think that I think like the cool mindset is wrong. Sorry. Make sure this isn't coming across right. Carl, because some people think I'm just saying cool, like, cool. Yeah. But Carl, you like, oh, it's going to be on the first call, the first meeting or the second. 

I think that entire like idea is just stupid because the most time it's not as linear as that. Like, oh, I'm going to do an intro called them and do a demo call. And that's when I'm going to share the pricing. 

It's like, mate, that just assumes all buyers are going to be the exact same and you're going to be able to show up exactly the same way. A lot of the time these days on Intricles, I don't get all the information I want. I'm still going to share enough that they feel like they're not just being, they didn't get anything from it as well. Sure, you can say, oh, well, when I ask questions, they help them see the problem differently. Yeah, that's true to a certain extent. But also like they showed up for something, like give them something to walk with. And then often times what I've been doing is getting the text basis straight away, texting them some questions I didn't get the answers to. And then we're saying, oh, can we jump on another call between this and the next one? And then all of a sudden we're doing like a lot more, right? But I think this idea that you have to get it all done in one call and you shouldn't do this by that at that stage, it's not as black and white as that. 

Adam, most of the question I get asked every time we finish off. 

No, you're doing the last one. No, no, no, hold on. One more first. One more first. Okay, good. Will, you could ban one go-to-market buzzword forever. What word has gone from the English dictionary? LinkedIn. 

It's not a go-to-market buzzword. And my career, man, I need it. Hey, if I need it, like abusive relationship. Let me just think for a second. Just any... Blank lead. Just anything blank lead. 

Proud or led. Proud or led. Proud or led. I don't fucking know. And it just shut up. It's a thing for it. Just do a new word. Come on, please make it fucking stop. You make me want to bomb it. 

Yeah, you can't just call it eight-kin-led sales. Like shut the fuck up, Will. 

Shut the fuck up. Shut your fucking mouth, Will. Come on, Will. This should just spin again. Come on. All right, Will. 

Ask your damn question, sir. Dream vacation destination. 

You'd think that, like, we picked the number one episode and sent someone on a trip or something the way you did. 

Yeah, I appreciate it. All right, let me just think. Let me check some prices on a sky scanner. Probably, like... There's no reason why I shouldn't just go to whatever place I say, but probably like Galactus and like that. Oh, no. Summer in South America. Someone mountainous. 

I'd love to probably do... Killing Munger. 

Yeah, I'd do Killing Munger. AFK is... It's my number one. I would love to do that, actually. That's probably a good one. Let me have a little bit deeper of things. I think South America, it's the one continent I haven't been to. Yeah. 

Very cool. I just love that. Pog flights are really cheap right now if you're looking at flights. Not that I was looking, but you could get to Prague for like 300 bucks right now. 

You try to leave my answer, you try to leave the witness out. 

I'm like, yeah, check with them. I made travel a little bit. That's where we could afford to send you, Will, and that's awesome because we are going. 

And your two kids flights to Prague. 

We can send you to the Middle East. 

You might not come back, but we can send you any Bachelor trips. 

Bachelor, Audi's good in Prague, I'll tell you. Fast, cheap and good. There you go. Will Aiken, thank you for joining the show, my friends. Thank you for sharing all this knowledge. Go check out Will. 

I believe Will, you could correct me if I'm wrong. It's willacan.com, right? Super easy. Good time being, yeah. Oh. 

Little tease there. All right, sir. Thank you for joining. We appreciate it. I appreciate you too as well. It was a pleasure. Thanks so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. 

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