#13 GTM AI Podcast: Building Leaner, Meaner, more Efficient GTM teams with AI: Frank Sonders of Salesforge

www.gtmaiacademy.com

https://www.salesforge.ai/

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Frank Sondors, the Chief Bacon Officer at Salesforge AI and Chief Email Officer at MailForge. Frank shared some fascinating insights into how AI is transforming the world of sales and helping companies become leaner, meaner, and more efficient.

One of the key takeaways from our conversation was how Salesforge is carving out a new market segment by focusing on helping SMBs scale their sales efforts using AI. Unlike traditional tools like Outreach and Salesloft, which cater primarily to enterprise customers, Salesforge offers an affordable, consumption-based pricing model that allows smaller companies to leverage the power of AI without breaking the bank.

Frank also highlighted the importance of deliverability in the world of email outreach. With increasing restrictions from providers like Gmail, it's becoming more challenging to ensure that your emails land in prospects' inboxes. That's where MailForge comes in, providing a dedicated infrastructure solution that helps safeguard deliverability.

Looking ahead, Frank sees a future where AI plays an increasingly autonomous role in sales, handling repetitive tasks like email writing and follow-ups. While this may lead to some job displacement, particularly for B and C players, Frank believes that those who are truly dedicated to the craft of sales will always have a place in the industry.

As more and more AI tools flood the market, Frank's advice for choosing the right one is simple: identify your biggest problem as a sales org and look for tools that specifically address that issue. Asking peers in sales communities and online forums can also be a great way to get unbiased recommendations.

It's an exciting time to be in sales, and I can't wait to see how companies like Salesforge continue to push the boundaries of what's possible with AI. 

Here are 5 key takeaways from Frank Sondors, featuring direct quotes:

1. Salesforge's unique positioning: "Salesforge helps you to keep your sort of sales team lean and mean. And it helps to deliver at this stage, unique emails in any language to your prospects."

2. The importance of dedicated email infrastructure: "You need to essentially have what I call secondary sort of dedicated infrastructure that's only used for your email motion, whether that's inbound emails, outbound emails, et cetera."

3. The future of AI in sales: "We're going to be seeing. Not just in Salesforge, but I believe a bunch of tools out there that are going down this path. And because a lot of, a lot of software is looking at how can we ultimately reduce headcount."

4. Identifying the right AI tool for your team: "You have to figure out where it was the problem that you have as a team. Is it on you know, is it non conversion rate front? Is it in the ability front? So identify the problem that you actually have, right. And what's the biggest problem that you currently have? And that's the, probably the AI tooling. That you should be looking for."

5. The potential for AI to increase conversion rates: "Typically whatever the baseline is. And let's say reply rate, right? So you got a reply rate, let's say 2 percent right now, you're selling some sort of software. We typically see a 2x relative lift. By leveraging Jenny, I capabilities as in doing computations, crafting unique emails, leveraging publicly available information and doing that."