Customer Success Playbook Season 2 Episode 49 - Dan Jourdan - Let's Talk Sales

In this episode of the Customer Success Playbook podcast, host Kevin Metzger interviews Dan Jourdan, VP of Business Development at Outsource Access and renowned sales energizer. The conversation explores the profound connection between sales and customer success, emphasizing how authentic relationships and human connections drive business growth. Dan shares his philosophy that sales is "the most noble profession" and discusses how genuine relationship-building transforms transactional interactions into lasting partnerships.

Key Themes and Business Insights

1. The Noble Nature of Sales

• Sales as a path to financial independence through serving multiple customers rather than a single employer
• The importance of focusing on customer outcomes rather than just immediate needs
• Building authentic relationships as the foundation of successful sales

2. Customer-Centric Approach

• Understanding and aligning with customer goals as the primary focus
• Keeping customer outcomes "front and center" throughout the sales process
• The significance of following through rather than just following up

3. Cross-Functional Collaboration

• The vital importance of sales and customer success teams working together
• Regular communication between teams to ensure customer satisfaction
• Using shared knowledge to drive better customer outcomes

4. Personal Development and Professional Success

• The connection between personal accountability and professional achievement
• The importance of setting and tracking goals
• Building and maintaining professional networks as a career asset

5. AI and Human Connection in Modern Sales

• Leveraging AI for efficiency while maintaining human relationships
• Using technology for research and initial contact while preserving personal touch
• The continuing importance of human creativity and relationship-building

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You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:
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You can find Kevin at:
Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web site
Kevin Metzger on Linked In.

You can find Roman at:
Roman Trebon on Linked In.

Transcript

song: 0:00

The energetic woman, they got the game, customer success is their claim to fame, on the podcast they light the spark, elevating your skills, creating a mark.

Kevin Metzger: 0:20

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the customer success playbook podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Metzger. Unfortunately, my co host Roman was unavoidably detained today. And before we get started quick reminder, subscribe. Rate the podcast, share the show, and if you're enjoying hearing it, engage with us on social media. You can find us on LinkedIn at the Customer Success Playbook. I am super excited to welcome Dan Jordan. Dan is a dynamic force in the sales world and vice president of business development at Outsource Access. He's known for his high energy approach and authentic relationships with customers. Relationship building style. Dan has spent over 13 years energizing and motivating sales teams with a sales energizer as the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to Guaranteed Success and a passionate advocate for people First a sales strategy. Dan brings a unique perspective on how. Genuine relationships and human connection drive customer success. His motto that people are the most valuable asset has helped countless businesses, not just grow their sales, but create lasting customer relationships that drive real value. Dan, welcome to the show. We're very excited to have you here.

Dan Jourdan: 1:38

Oh my gosh, that was awesome. You're a pro at this, man. I've been on a lot of these, but that's true. If I was your customer, I would feel like I was well served. You did your research. Do you know me? You said it with enthusiasm and excitement. I feel special. I mean, that's exactly how a customer wants to feel. Thank you.

Kevin Metzger: 2:00

And, and, and you're always so focused on sales and usually I go into a topic overview, but we're talking about sales today and we're talking about how sales really is about customer success and driving to customer success. I'd love to get your viewpoint and let you just kind of vamp a little bit on what sales is about and how it's focused on customer service. Yeah. Well,

Dan Jourdan: 2:22

Awesome. Thank you for asking that. I really believe that sales is the most noble profession and hear me out for a second, because it's something that I find near and dear when I was a boy, my dad was an immigrant from France. Jewish lost his dad in the Holocaust, only had a sixth grade education, came to America. There was never an expectation of college for me or anything like that. We were just, we're trying to get through and I'm graduating high school. And my dad, my dad never gave me much advice, but when he did the stuff that he gave me was really good. This particular one has stuck with me forever. I was graduating high school. My dad comes to me and he says, so Danny, what are you going to do? I gave him my plans. He said, good, Danny, in this country, he always started it that way. Whenever he said, Danny, in this country, I knew something good was coming. And he said, Danny, in this country. You get a job, you have one customer, and he's called the boss, and if he gets a wild hair up his tuchus and decides to fire you, you got gunesh. Gunesh means nothing in Yiddish. He goes, you got nothing. But he says, Danny, you become a salesman, you have a hundred bosses. But they're called customers. If one of them fires you, who cares? You got 99 more. Financial freedom doesn't come with getting a job. It comes with being able to earn an income anytime, anywhere, any place, those who serve the most earn the most. And that was his lesson. That's where I take it. I take it to a next level in sales. And so that's, that's, that's the frame with which this conversation goes.

Kevin Metzger: 4:34

Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. I think. When you start looking at having lots of customers and driving sales to lots of customers, you're really trying to figure out how to meet their needs, right? I mean, that's the basis of what you're doing when you're selling. What is it that the customer wants? What's their desire and how are you going to help them achieve it?

Dan Jourdan: 4:59

Yeah, it's one step further. It's having the mental state of mind to not just serve. what they need, but to really dig deep and find out what outcomes they want. So they're not, you know, they're not buying the old stories, you know, they're not buying the drill, they're buying the whole, the outcome of it. But everybody has a, a, a, a much more emotional and deeper outcome. If you find out what it is, you know, what do you want to do? And just ask that extra question. Why is that important to you? Yeah, and and really why is that important to you and find out and go a little bigger deep there and then, you know, serve them with that in mind. 1 of my favorite lines to use, it's become a part of me whenever I'm on a sales call. 1 of the 1st things I say, I'll say, Kevin, listen, we're going to talk about a whole mess of things here. But let me tell you something. What I constantly do is I'm keeping your goals and your outcome front and center of what we're talking about here. So I'm going to talk about it a million times and I'm going to keep bringing you back to it. Because I'm not going to let you get something that's going to take you away from that goal. You're either moving closer to or further from your goal. And we're going to keep you right there. And so with that in mind, it's the greatest service of all.

Kevin Metzger: 6:22

Yeah. And, you know, I think I love that. You kind of went there and talking about the outcomes because Sue. If you look at customer success as a profession, customer success as a profession is post sales, really post initial implementation. A lot of the time, post initial implementation, the way customer success is defined, or at least historically has been, is okay. How do you make sure that customers are happy? How do you make sure that they're going to renew? Those are the goals of customer success and what we found and what a lot of people in the industry have talked about and shown, uh, through research is if you know what the customer's outcomes are, if you know what their goals are and you start measuring how you are performing against those goals, That's more important than anything else you can do. If you measure against how you perform against those goals, you're actually going to drive renewals. You're going to drive outcome. You're going to drive additional sales. One of the things I've seen as somebody who's been in the second day support mode, you hear a lot of people talk about sales sold this and. They told the customer it could do this, and they told the customer it can do that. I don't think sales ever comes in trying to do that. And I think sales is coming in trying now. Granted, there's people that are better at this and people who are worse at it. But I think real true sales professionals are going towards the outcomes. What's been your experience with that over the years?

Dan Jourdan: 7:53

Yeah, it is, Like you said, some salespeople are much more transactional than they should be. And, and some people are much more strategic than some salespeople, more strategic than they should be. And you got to find that happy medium, but I never considered it. And I always train my people. Don't consider it, follow. Follow up. You're not following up. I need you to follow through and you can only follow through when you know what that goal is. And so I, I bring more people into the thing. I, if, if the salesperson is doing their job, they have a real friendship with their customers. If it's something of size there being focused on the outcome, isn't a problem when the technicians come in to service the work we're in constant communication because I'm measuring what success looks like you have to have goals to meet. And we just go backwards and remember, this is what we're doing. It's all about the person, but I think the, the service techs and the sales people need to constantly making efforts to, uh, to know each other.

Kevin Metzger: 9:06

Yeah,

Dan Jourdan: 9:06

they need to meet all the time. It should not be a competition. One can help the other.

Kevin Metzger: 9:12

I think you're making such an important point. And it was one of the things that I'm constantly focused on with my teams is, Hey, when's the last time you talked to your sales team about the state of the customer, what they're experiencing, what they're hearing from the customer, because it's such. Good feedback that you might not get directly with your customer. When we do monthly ops reviews or quarterly business reviews, we want to be fully in alignment with our sales folks so that we know what they're hearing, uh, if there's anything coming up and that they're aware of any issues that we're, we're seeing so that we can work together as a team to drive, to drive the customer outcomes, to drive success of the customer. And to really drive through renewals and figure out what else they need from

Dan Jourdan: 10:00

us. It's the most important thing. I do stand ups with my team. Now we have some technology that does it. Maybe I'll share with you later. It's a little things, but we do stand ups every day. I mean, we can do it by email once a week. We talk in person, but it's through this program. To find out what's going on, not because of course it makes the job go a lot smoother. Everybody's happier when people get in, you know, cause problems happen during any kind of project. However, the best thing is the amount of referrals you get is unbelievable. It's so much better with each point of success during the, you know, during the implementation of something like that, you get more referrals. You know, when people stay tight together, I always encourage everybody to give them a little juice. Everybody gets some money on the side. If they're making a recommendation. Sure. I mean, not from the company, from the salesperson themselves, you got the proper sales person is considering themselves an entrepreneur. They're coming up with ways to grow their, what, what better way to get referrals. You've got somebody in the customer's place all day long, singing your praises. I mean, come on, go in there and get some referrals and do the same thing for them. I mean, it's just, it's a love story when people, when they, when those people coexist together. And by the way, it happens organically. You know, the salespeople know who they want to give the job to. They know who's going to do a better job than somebody else.

Kevin Metzger: 11:34

Yeah. That makes sense. Especially over time as you see teams deliver and how they deliver and how they organize. Yeah,

Dan Jourdan: 11:41

that's right. Everybody has their favorites. We're all human. Most people that you meet, unless they're lawyers or something, are human. Every day someone's being born, someone dies, someone's moving, someone's coming, someone's getting fired, someone's getting a new job, someone's getting sick, someone's getting well. A million things are happening in people's lives. The more you know about their lives, the more you're less of a risk to do business with. Thank you. The more, you know, people, the more jobs go smoother because everybody's on the same side. People are human. And sometimes, you know, 1 of the things, there are 3 things you can ask for. And this is by the way, great for customer service. There are 3 things you can ask for that people would love to give you. One of them is help. I have something called the magic words. Never ask, hi, how you doing today? Like if you're calling somebody new or cause they know something went wrong. They say, Hey, I wonder if you could help me. People have a need to help. So they will lean in. Hey, what if you could help me? We're having a challenge with this. And that's a good, a second one is an opinion. People like to give opinions cause it makes them smart. But the best thing to do is to ask for somebody's advice. It's like a double whammy. One, they're filling their inner need to help to feel like a good human. And secondly, you've just called them smart. Nobody asks for advice from a three year old. You don't walk up to an idiot and say, Hey, can I have some advice? You don't care. So you called somebody smart, but here's the trick. You ask For somebody's advice, if I could ask your advice, what would be the best way to serve you guys? So we'll be able to stay in here forever because we really want to do that. So you ask for someone's advice, you take their advice, then you utilize their advice. And report back to them what happened when you took their advice and you own them. They're yours forever. They will talk about you at the dinner table. They will share stories whenever they're hanging out with their friends because it's making them feel so good about themselves. And if you know that everybody's human, everybody has that need you. To feel like they're worthwhile, you can do that with your customers, your prospects, your friends, and all of a sudden you're welcome everywhere you go.

Kevin Metzger: 14:20

That's great. I haven't been in the sales process as much, but we are always selling, right? Whether we're selling ideas. One of the things I found Found valuable. And I'd love to hear your advice on it is when I'm in meetings and we're talking about ideas and how we're going to achieve certain things. I don't want to own the idea ever. I always want it to be my customer's idea. Somebody, somebody else in the meetings idea. To as to how we're going to get there, and I mean, I've used strategies, such as asking questions to drive it to help bring it out, recognizing when the idea comes from somebody else. How do we achieve that? Can we do this to get there? I never want if I want to achieve something. I want the idea ownership to come from somebody else so that we can drive together to achieve it.

Dan Jourdan: 15:16

Understanding that you are the expert. You're able to persuade and manipulate the right way. I love making it their idea. Once you know it's the right idea, add the extra thing because everybody's always worried about being wrong or making a mistake. And so, you know, you say, listen, we're here. To do the job the end of the day. This was your, when this works really well, you're gonna get the credit. If things mess up, I'll take the blame. It's me. It's me. Yep. And, and, and vocalize that. Vocalize that, you know, I have a, I have a. In my five values that I personally like to follow, it's gratitude, forgiveness, accountability, courage, and kindness. And some of them are, are easy to get. It's easy even to forgive. Okay, I'll just forgive you if you cut me off, whatever. The biggest challenge is to forgive yourself. Which is, which is part of forgiveness because you are going to screw up and you are going to make mistakes and you know, it's going to happen. You're just going to feel really bad and whatever, and, you know, take the blame, forgive yourself and move on. That's the type of company. So I share that. And I, and I suggest that people do that when you're starting a new relationship, when somebody is walking in and you're servicing a client, it's not a bad idea to share with them your values. What they can expect from you and that accountability one, I tell them, keep me accountable. If I screw up, call me to the table. I'm a big boy and I can handle it. By the way, they never will. Because you're really telling yourself, this is really important. Uh, uh, for everybody, everybody, you know, has their own personal values that they like to live by and what have you. Um, but one thing that I know for sure about most people, all people, nobody wants to hang around with liars. You meet someone who's a perpetual liar. You're going to avoid that person. How many times did you say you're going to wake up a certain time and not do it? Or how many times did you tell yourself, I'm going to work out and then didn't do it. You've lied to yourself and by not keeping yourself accountable, you're starting not to like yourself. And when you don't like yourself and you're servicing a client, it's tough for them to like you. Accountability. Of self is a very important thing. Yeah. In service of others.

Kevin Metzger: 17:50

Yeah. No, I think that's huge. I mean,

Dan Jourdan: 17:54

Yeah, you didn't think we're going to get this deep, did you? You see, this is how it rolls when you come with the dig.

Kevin Metzger: 18:00

Well, it's fantastic. I, I, but I think what your, your point, look, I mean, I'm going to personally, I spent a long time talking to myself about how I'm going to lose weight, start exercising and everything, and spent literally 15 years of my life, getting up to 285 pounds where I look at pictures of myself when I was that big, I was because I've spent the last 15 years learning that accountability, driving that accountability and doing great. Thank you. Well, and I'm, you know, I'm 50 pounds lighter. I look at the 285 pound guy and I'm like, that guy could eat me. You're right. It reflected in my job, it reflected in my life, it reflected in how I serve people, and it reflected in how I built, built my life since then. Now, the one place it didn't reflect In how I serve people in life as my family, because that was where I had structure. And I knew exactly what I wanted to do as I grew in responsibility. It's made me not just a better person, but better at making sure everything else in life goes, my, how I serve my customers, how I deliver, taking mistake, taking responsibility for one mistakes. Learning that failure is fine, as long as you understand that you failed and figure out how you're going to move next and coming with the answer to that. And I think that's all part of growing, driving success. It's, we're not just talking about customer success, we're talking about success in life at that point. Well, you know, your,

Dan Jourdan: 19:41

your customers. Want to work with a successful person and you get to decide what that success is for you. Keeping your goals at the center, you're either moving closer to or further from your goals. You can fail, but you could fail forward, make a mistake and modify, change, improvise, adapt, and overcome. But you have that goal. So it's very important for everybody. For customer success for you to have that, that, that kind of personal success goals for yourself. It just, it doesn't necessarily need to be a number, but it needs to be a place. It needs to be a vision. And, and, you know, with a time there where you want to be in your life. So you're always moving forward. I remember 1 time I was, I was sitting at a red light and there were 2 people that 1 guy was dressed in a suit and it was obvious this was in Manhattan. Was in New Jersey, but some guy was, you know, dressed in a suit and he's crossing the street and he's moving briskly like you would imagine somebody going to work or something like that. And there was another guy who didn't look homeless, but didn't look like he was going to her job. And he, they started off on the road the same time, but one guy kind of just kind of sauntered around or whatever. And the other guy moved. And I was thinking, you know, I was thinking out loud, I said, I wonder where that guy's going. Looking at the guy who was moving slowly. My friend next to me looked at me and said, Nowhere. I thought you're exactly right. He's going nowhere. Nobody would follow this guy because he's going nowhere. So you present as the person who's going somewhere in your own life. The way to be a leader is to look behind you and see if you got any followers. You do that through your personal strength, your personal life. We talk about it in terms of sales, but it's services sales the same way you sell yourself to your wife every day. I see these people, they say, you know, I'm not in sales. Can you imagine getting married? Think of this whole concept of getting married. I'm on a rant right now. Stay with me. So I just think of it. Here is somehow with seven and a half billion people on the planet billion. That's like a lot, you know One you you can fill up, you know, the empire state building with golf balls Anyway, so it's like a billion is a lot and you convinced Another human being with all those options to forsake Everybody else on the planet and stay with you Forever and you think you're not a salesman I mean, remember all the crazy things you did to win the affection of your significant other, your spouse. And what if you did a half that for your client? What if you did a half of that? You know how to get what you want if you really want it. And if you really want customer success, it's impossible for it not to happen.

Kevin Metzger: 22:54

So you've worked with a lot of sales teams over the years, right? What are the personality traits you find most valuable in salespeople?

Dan Jourdan: 23:07

Unabashed honesty on a, is this a cold call? Yes, this is a cold call, especially right now, especially right now with all the AI. I mean, there's like a game that people play anytime you talk to anybody or you get an email or something. I wonder if this is real. Oh, yeah. I wonder if, you know, it's, that's, that's the whole thing. And we're scared that one day. AI is gonna be that real that we won't be able to figure it out. You know, it's pretty close. Yes. So it's probably there already, maybe not, maybe not public, but it's probably there already. So maybe you could share a little bit of that, but honesty, willingness to learn and desire to, I always tell buddy, if you want to be a great salesperson first, be a great person. A great person is one who sees things for what they are, knows what he or she wants. And is willing to go through a lot of pain to get it. People with bigger muscles earn more money. I mean, that's just what it is. I didn't make the rules. That's what it is. People who dress nicer earn more money. There are certain things you control. Taller people earn more money. Okay. Pretty people earn more money. But honest people earn the most. They just go right at it because ultimately people want to earn. Go ahead and do whatever you can to live up to your expectations. Live up to that thing that you want. People who set goals and track. I lost some weight recently, like 20 pounds or what have you. And one day I decided that I'm going to keep track of what I eat. And then I was keeping track, I'm eating a lot of cabbage. So I said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make, I'm going to get a cooler and make my breakfast and lunch every day. So I'm not going to go out and eat lunch and sleep until I'm hungry and I put it in the cooler. And every day I make, and when you make your own lunch, you don't put Twinkies and ho ho's. You wind up making a sweet potato. I lost 18, 19 pounds because I was following that habit. So. What a sales people, people that know what they want and create the habits to get it.

Kevin Metzger: 25:29

And so I have a feeling I know we're going to go with the answer to this, but how do you tell people to balance the pressure of hitting targets versus the patients required to build the genuine relationship? I'll leave it there and let you run from that.

Dan Jourdan: 25:47

One of the other things that my dad taught me, Danny, in this country, we follow the 11th commandment. What is the 11th commandment? You ask never pay retail. So that was now what I mean by that is there's always a way for you to figure out how to get. paid to learn something. You don't pay to learn, you get paid to learn. And how you do that is instead of learning how to sell or learning how to do all this and you know, paying a guy like me or something, get a job and have them pay you. And if you get a course and learn how to do something, or if someone's paying for a course, you'll be the best student. You follow it word for, if they give you a recipe, you follow the recipe. To a T. If you don't meet your quota from following with the recipe, not, not your fault. You know, that's their, you know, that's their recipe. Never leave empty handed. So, anytime you're with a company and you get a territory and you start rocking and rolling, you get a bunch of leads that come in and all that stuff. And. And I have told this to company, so I'm not feeling out of turn. All those people that you've spoken with, that's yours. So that's your database. You're growing your database. You're growing your LinkedIn connections. You're building those relationships there. The second place you go to. Now you got a head start. Now you got all those people right there and and and on and on and on and on. And so you keep on grabbing from what you go. Never worry about their quotas that you want to do. By the way, the quotas that they give you while you might think they're high. You can double them if you do it right, if you find out what your goal is at the end of that quarter, and then you go back and figure out how to do that, you can get that automatically with all that stuff in this marketplace. The entrepreneurial mindset is if you're a salesman, you're a professional salesperson, you're not just selling one product, you're selling number one, you're selling yourself and the product is incidental. I'm teaching people to be great personally. It's not the product that you're doing right there now in customer success. It's different. It's not it's not any different with customer success. You're working with someone. You move to another place. That's still your name. I know you can't. There's coming. It's not going to compete with all that stuff, but everybody leaves and goes to a different place. Nobody's in the same place anymore.

Kevin Metzger: 28:40

Yeah, then over time, you still end up working with people again. It's been amazing over the 25 ish years plus years that I've been in industry. Uh, very first person who I, I worked with, I, I've had come in contact with numerous times. And I remember sitting there talking. Guy who I actually haven't come in contact with again, but 1 of my 1st jobs, I'm telling me, look, this is a small industry. Everybody works together. We'll see each other again. This guy happened to me from Washington. I was from Atlanta. We didn't see each other again, but, you know,

Dan Jourdan: 29:19

but it's okay. You know, here's the thing. 25 years happens. Whether you're building a large database of connections or not.

Kevin Metzger: 29:29

Yep. You may as well build the connection.

Dan Jourdan: 29:33

Yeah. A, a, a 10 years from now, your database, if you're just starting today is your most important asset. You know, it's most important asset. People will do that. And you know, the more success, uh, you make, uh, the more successful you are in helping other people be successful. Zig Ziglar thing, anything in the world you want, if you help enough, other people get what they want. Yeah. And you begin to create a bit of a reputation of helping people like you're doing with this podcast.

Kevin Metzger: 30:04

So last question, before we get into the rapid fire stuff, how do you see AI interplay within sales at this point? Are you using it at all? Have you seen it used much yet? What's your thoughts?

Dan Jourdan: 30:19

Yeah, well, how I'm using it is, you know, I do a lot of videos. And so in my videos, the AI basically does all the captions in the way Mozama one spins things around and makes it nice and all that. You almost feel guilty. Pressing a button and it's doing

Kevin Metzger: 30:36

all

Dan Jourdan: 30:36

this stuff. Um, but there are also with those videos And and I in terms of sales, i'm a real proponent of video for everything I send video texts. I send video through linkedin. I send video emails. I put things out there, but very Individualized stuff. Well, there there's technology now that I could have, you know, hi, I'm Veronica, Dan's assistant, and I'm calling you regarding this. It's an AI human being, very attractive, and you could spill it out to everybody. I've toyed around with that, and it's scary good. It's scary good. So I'm sure you've seen all these things. I remember speaking to a friend who has software for Zoom calls where there's like an assistant helping people and it's an AI thing, and it was too realistic and, and it freaked people out, so they had to make it look a little more cartoonish. It's interesting. I'm excited. I'm excited by it. I think it's really good for it can very quickly assimilate a lot of data and I'm using it certainly in research. It's easy for reaching out to prospects. I know everything about their history and their past and what their goals are and all that stuff. And I can, I can create 1st contact points that would make them at least answer.

Kevin Metzger: 32:05

Yeah, yeah.

Dan Jourdan: 32:07

Yeah, go ahead. Well, I, I just, I do want to with 1 caveat at this point. I'm still better. I'm still better than I was. I was doing, you know, I do some whale hunting for some big guys. We have 1 of our clients who does with really big financial planner people and. Couldn't get a hold of this guy, but he was like a whale. This was like a billionaire type of person that we're trying to do. So how do you get this guy to answer the phone and get a hold of him? So he was a whale. So we sent him wrapped up and you know, it took him like an hour to take the wrapping off or whatever, a 12 foot long, uh, Harpoon. Harpoon. And then a week later, two gallons of tartar sauce, along with letters saying, that's how confident we are that we're going to capture this. Well, and so, you know, along with the letter, what have you, and then the guy called up and he said, can I speak to Mr. Blah, blah, blah. And he said, who is this? He says, Like this, this is how we do it. I'm the guy who sent the harpoon. You're the guy! Hold on one second. You know. And when he went to the meeting, there was a, you know, it was just. On the wall, big harpoon. Yeah, it's a story forever. Hey, I can't do that yet. You know, we're still there.

Kevin Metzger: 33:32

Coming up with ideas like that. I mean, so a lot of, I've been to several industry meetings, talk with a lot of people in the industry. This podcast has driven me to have a lot of those discussions. The thing that people keep talking about is, you know, humans, AI can't do empathy. AI can actually do a little empathy, but let's put that aside for a minute. Humans still want to have interface and connection with humans. It's the human connection that's helping to drive everything. If you're using AI to help you with understand everything else that's going on, understand, you know, I can't remember every single detail of every single conversation I have with a customer, but I can record every conversation I have with a customer and put it into my database. Number one, I can get notes much faster and better things that are much more thorough because a computer can look at everything that happened and the recording and transcript and derive notes much faster, much more cleanly than I can. I still have to go back and view it and say, Oh, wait, we had this conversation and that's not captured. Can you update the notes to capture that piece of information? But most of the time, note generation is fantastic. Out of these podcasts. We generate notes, all of the descriptions and all of that, I run it through a GPT that I created. Actually, it's a cloud project, but run it through a cloud project. I created and pull all of the descriptions and that kind of stuff, generate LinkedIn posts that are pretty decent. I generate a LinkedIn post for the guests that I share. All of that's done through a single click by pushing it to to this. Claude AI that I created, um, project. I'm working on an article right now that I'm hoping to publish this week about tribal knowledge and organizations. You're not going to lose that tribal knowledge when you have employee turnover going forward, because you can capture all of it and really train and AI on it and make sure that it works. That knowledge is stored within the organization. I had a customer who I've had sales conversations happen that didn't get documented in contracts. They're like, but we were told that we, we know we have this. I'm like, all right, get me an email, show me proof of it. I trust you, but I need to be able to go convince other people. Well, now all of those things are tracked. And if you're tracking the conversations, you can find the evidence. You could search for it. Instantly.

Dan Jourdan: 36:06

Ultimately, there's someone who lives close to us who has a company that does, uh, basically travel. They're an AI company, but they deal with, uh, companies that do, you know, 100 million in travel expense and things like that. And, you know, everybody can find the best deals from the airlines and things like that, but it's able to, the AI, the bot is able to capture, like, are you using, you know, What form of Uber are you looking when you went this distance? Instead of that? I mean, a million different things and he can save considerable amounts of money. 10 percent on 100 million is in chump change just because they can assimilate all that data very quickly. But the challenge is always. Getting accurate real time data in any area. So, you know, if you can get it, then AI is awesome and being able to synthesize it in a way that that's usable.

Kevin Metzger: 37:04

Yeah, I just took a new job and the new company I'm working with, that's one of the things we're actually looking at. It's not just real time data, but it's real time data across your entire org. A lot of the problems right now are Well, we're going to need to talk. I got a client.

Dan Jourdan: 37:21

I got a client that has a product that you and I need to talk about. This is why. Talk to more people, and then opportunities arise for everybody.

Kevin Metzger: 37:30

Let's get into the rapid fire and rapid fire. This has been a fantastic conversation. I've definitely appreciated it so far.

Dan Jourdan: 37:38

Yeah.

Kevin Metzger: 37:38

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Dan Jourdan: 37:41

Oh, gosh, I'm a terrible person when it comes to hobbies. I have old man hobbies. I really like working. Here's my challenge. As upbeat and as excitable as I am, That's as low as I can get to. I mean, if I, if I'm not doing something, baby, that's where I find the devil. And so I keep busy. I'm on my own lawn. I got to keep moving. Hobbies are, you know, we do a lot with the family. We do a lot with the kids. My daughter just got married. Everybody lives close by. We have lots of uh, get togethers and we do family stuff. Anything where I have the opportunity to do something physical, just get out there. Move.

Kevin Metzger: 38:20

Where do you recommend people go when they visit in the Atlanta areas?

Dan Jourdan: 38:24

Oh my gosh, we just had a great time. We go up to North Georgia a lot to the Dahlonega area and hang out there. We do a lot of kind of hiking up there and there's a bunch of vineyards, which is really cool. I'm not a, I'm not a big drinker, but it's just so beautiful. And I have a passion. That's not all that secret. Since a kid, I've always loved. Classical music and just being in an environment like that. We, we also have a place at Lake Sinclair. We've got a lake house and it's great being around water and mountains is kind of my thing.

Kevin Metzger: 38:56

Uh, what's a book or author you would recommend for both?

Dan Jourdan: 38:59

Oh my gosh. Well, here's the thing. My mother was a grade school librarian for 30 years. She was the librarian. She looked just like it to the bun, the whole shebang. Yeah. She was like, I was a real librarian. Reading was very difficult. household. And so I, I read a lot of still, I read a lot of self health books and things like that. Fiction currently right now I'm reading Lee Childs, Jack Reacher novels, which are a lot of fun doing that. And, and then I have my, my bouts that I'm into. I don't know if you had Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. I went through a stage where I was reading all the classics and I got stuck on Dostoevsky and you know, those, those five books. Oh my gosh. I would suggest Lee Childs and read the Jack Reacher novels. They're a lot of fun.

Kevin Metzger: 39:47

Where can people find you? What's the best way to get in contact with you?

Dan Jourdan: 39:50

There's this new site out it's called Google and just put my name in there always get a call right Dan Jordan, but it has a u in there. It screws everybody up. So it's a dan j o u r d a n on linkedin Quite a bit. If anybody wants to reach me, I'm very accessible. Obviously I like to talk. I'm easy to get ahold of. There's not too many people we can't help. Currently right now. I, my, my biggest client, what we do is we work with really, we work with accounts, CPAs, professional service organizations who are doing one to 2 million and we bring them all to 10 to 20 million so they can retire and have a good life, multimillionaires, much better than you and me.

Kevin Metzger: 40:37

Dan, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. I've enjoyed talking about sales and the intersection of sales and customer success. For our listeners, if you found this episode helpful, don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating, share with your network, we'll see you next time on the customer success playbook. And until then, keep on playing.

song: 41:07

Let's dive deeper into the playbook. The secrets they share, no need to look. From onboarding to retention, they've got it all. Success is the goal, gonna stand tall. Success is the goal, gonna stand tall.