The “Tell Me More” Problem

LLMs are providing sellers the opportunity to reshape their engagement strategies. Ideally, enabling higher impact first conversations.

We can ask the LLM to research the organization, identifying the key issues the company is facing. We can ask the LLM to write a relevant prospecting letter focusing on a certain persona. We can ask it to script a conversation we’d like to have with the customer.

And, somewhat surprisingly, the quality of these scripts can be pretty good.

We now have the ability, rather than starting with a product pitch, to engage our prospects and customers in a conversation that is more likely to be relevant to them and the issues they face.

And the customers might respond with some interest. “Tell me more…..”

And that’s where the problem arises!

Do we have a deep enough understanding, to we have the business acumen or knowledge to dive deeper into the issues, to engage the customer in discussions most relevant to them? We can’t hit “pause” on the conversation, saying, “Let me check with ChatGPT…..”

Not long ago, a salesperson engaged me in one of these types of conversations. He had an interesting premise, I went against my better judgment, agreeing to a call. We spoke, I said his premise was interesting and asked him a few questions to dive deeper into the issues. He struggled with the response, saying, “Let’s schedule a demo…..” I stopped him, asking, “I’m really interested in learning more about these issues and how they might impact me……”

You know where that conversation went.

The “Tell Me More” problem is difficult.

While the LLMs may give us an interesting starting point, “Tell Me More” gets us into issues very specific to an individual at a moment in time. LLMs can’t know what the customers experiencing that issue right now. LLMs don’t have the ability to understand what it means to each person or how they feel about it. It can’ help the customer understand the specific impact of the issue on the customer and their organization. It can’t help them understand the specific risks. LLMs can’t help our customers understand the best path forward or how a solution will address all their unique challenges issues.

These conversations are each unique to the organizations and individuals at a specific point in time. If we are to engage the customers in these conversations, helping them learn and move forward we have to have the ability to conduct these business relevant discussions.

While LLMs offer us the possibility to engage prospects and customers with greater impact, to continue those discussions, we have to be able to deal with the “Tell Me More,” response we hope those outreaches generate.

Afterword: This article was a result of a discussion of the recent article: I’m A Doctor. ChatGPT’s Bedside Manner Is Better Than Mine. I found it fascinating that certain conversations tend to follow “scripts.” The interesting thing is the author had deep knowledge around the issues, to evaluate whether the ChatGPT script might be more effective than his own self generated script. At the same time, he had the deep knowledge to adjust the script. And, most importantly, he could respond to the inevitable question from the patient, “Tell Me More.” The challenge is, if we can’t do the same thing, if we don’t have that deep knowledge, we cannot continue the conversation.

Afterword: Below is the AI generated discussion of this article. I’m actually embarrassed, the discussion is better than the article! Enjoy!