Shownotes
- Leveraging AI in Business: Ashley Beck Cuellar discusses how she uses ChatGPT to create contracts for her yoga and sales coaching businesses. She highlights the personalized assistance AI provides and suggests it's a valuable tool for sales teams to reframe marketing content into more engaging personal posts.
- Empowering Employee Personal Brands: We observe that while large companies often resist allowing employees to cultivate personal brands, doing so can convert employees into lead generators and advocates for the company. Empowering employees to build their personal brands not only enriches their professional growth but also benefits the company's visibility and credibility.
- Maintaining Brand Consistency During Transitions: Cuellar and Larry Roberts share insights on navigating leadership changes, stressing the importance of upholding a brand's core values and philosophies. They emphasize that the new leaders must embody the brand while integrating their personal touch to ensure continuous trust and consistency.
- Engaging Across Generations: We discuss the generational divide in professional settings, noting the biases held by both older and younger team members. Ashley highlights the need for training and workshops that engage all age groups, ensuring everyone feels valued and is willing to learn new tools and platforms like LinkedIn.
- Innovative Sales and Marketing Tools: Ashley introduces several innovative tools such as Crystal Nose for personality insights and Senspark for personalized video messaging. These tools can help tailor communication styles and create more engaging, effective interactions, particularly in sales.
Transcripts
What is happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [:And I'm Sara Lohse. And this is Branded, Your comprehensive guide to creative branding.
Larry Roberts [:And on this outside the box episode, we're going to talk. Be talking with Ashley Beck Cuellar, owner of Sales Spark coaching, bringing modern relational sales coaching to teams utilizing social selling and other outside the box tools to help you book more meetings. And I love that. And, you know, we were talking a little bit in the green room, and Ashley already blew me away. I think she mentioned, like, three different tools I'd never even heard of. So I think this is going to be a super beneficial episode of the podcast and I think you're going to take a lot away from it. So, Ashley, thank you so very much for joining us.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Of course. I'm excited to be with you guys.
Larry Roberts [:I love the fact that in your. In your bio, you mentioned that you're a sneaker head. You're a dog person with a cat, which I kind of am, too. A hot yoga instructor, a swim coach, and you have seven tattoos, including a tramp stamp that your daughter calls your maleficent horns.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Yeah.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah. I think that's just a testament to our. We'll just say demographic maybe.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Definitely. I was 18. They were super cool. I didn't care who the artist was. I walked in the door, said, put this thing on me, and there it is. And then my daughter one day, just out of nowhere was like, mom, those kind of look like maleficent horns.
Sara Lohse [:And that's what it's supposed to be.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Used to call it before.
Larry Roberts [:What are they supposed to be like? Sara was asking there what we.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Tribal art. It's like tribal art that goes like this.
Larry Roberts [:Of course it is, but of course it is not good.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And to get it covered up, I have to have, like, half my back and butt tattooed. And I'm just not into that. Not yet, anyway.
Larry Roberts [:Okay, well, here, here, I'll make you feel a little bit better. Is I used to be much, much thinner, and I used to have what I considered an amazing six pack. I was in shape and I went and I got this magnificent tribal tattoo right across my lower abdomen, right across my belly button. So I've got tribal that goes out to both sides of my belly button. And while it was a nice piece of artwork, initially, it's not quite as nice today.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:So when women get pregnant, they tell you, like, don't get stuff around your belly because it's going to strike and look funny later.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, I don't know. I didn't know there was that much Ink in the tattoo. Honestly, I had no idea that it would cover so much area.
Sara Lohse [:But, yeah, I can't relate. I've never experienced a bad tattoo.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Yeah, never. I know that's a lie. Never.
Sara Lohse [:What are you talking about?
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:I'm glad we all have that story in common, like, at stakeholders. Story of, like, permanent ink that we made a decision, was good at one time and then became not so good.
Sara Lohse [:In my defense, I immediately knew mine was bad.
Larry Roberts [:But the worst part for mine is I remember distinctly laying on the table and my homeboy's going, dude, you're gonna get older. You're gonna get fat. And I'm like, bruh, I'm never getting fat. There's no freaking way. I'm never gonna be there. And now here I am. I have this. I have a foot and a half tribal tattoo covering my ab.
Larry Roberts [:It's. It's ridiculous. So my friends. My friends did try to tell me, and I did not listen, so it happens that way.
Sara Lohse [:But is there an AI tool that can tell us what tattoo will actually not look terrible in a few years?
Larry Roberts [:No, because they all will 100. They all will. Eventually they will look bad, so enjoy them.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:My husband got something that was supposed to be a dragon on his chest, which now just looks like a giant blob of ink. And I'm like, wow, that was probably not good to start with, honestly, but really just looks not great now.
Larry Roberts [:It happens, man. It's. It's the joy of youth. It's the joy of youth.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:So freedom in making your own decisions.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I think we could relate that back to building our own personal brands, too, is, you know, sometimes we make bad decisions when trying to build those brands, and we learn from them. Hopefully, you know, hopefully we find ourselves, you know, a year or two later, and we've learned from some of those mistakes, and we've been able to rectify those situations. But, Ashley, in your experience, what are some of the outside the box approaches that you've seen that work for building a personal brand?
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:I think that by start. The thing I want to say to start, and I've listened to tons of episodes of you guys podcast, but I feel like people make personal a personal brand and personal branding so much more complicated than it really needs to be. At the very beginning, they're like, well, I don't know. What is my brand? Well, your brand is you, friend. Like, get in your camera, look at what you have the most pictures of. Write down five topics that you can talk about for 30 minutes without prep, like that is your brand, that's who you are. You can refine that and put it in different buckets but like you already are your brand. You just have to figure it out a little bit.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And I just think people are like, and I even said this, like I felt like for a long time I had to have a logo and I had to have all this like really super branded stuff and that I couldn't have a personal brand until I had all the things. And then when I was deciding to leave my job after 17 years in the same spot, I was like, okay, well we're going to give this a shot anyway. And just kind of went for it. And then my personal brand kind of came out of my own writing and posting and just showing up as myself on LinkedIn. And so just from that standpoint, like a personal brand is not quite as difficult as everybody makes it. But for sales teams they kind of have to figure out a way to have a personal brand but a cohesive team brand at the same time. And that can prove difficult because everybody is so different. But I again I think that a lot of sales teams over complicate what that really means.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:It just means having your sales team members show up as themselves but still talk about the things that they do and the things that your products do. But it's not like a pitch slapping a video every single time you post. You know, I mean I post about yoga, I post about sales, I post about shitty pitch slaps in my DMs, things like that.
Sara Lohse [:So can't relate.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:We've never with the sales team too the same way. But sales teams need like way more tools often because it's B2B obviously and there's way much more noise. It takes you know, longer to catch the interest of people especially in like service based businesses and so to figure that kind of thing out. Because everybody that wants to provide a service based business is expert at what they're providing. But they aren't all experts at sales yet. They are all selling themselves and salespeople. Yeah. And so like learning some of those things.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:But so chat GPT. I know you guys are well aware about chat GPT and what's chat GPT? Larry wrote an entire book.
Larry Roberts [:What is that?
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Right.
Larry Roberts [:I don't know what that is.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:What is. But though that's the thing. So I teach yoga on Wednesday afternoons. I go in and I chit chat a little bit before my class comes in. I'm talking to the girl at the desk and I mentioned how I had asked ChatGPT to make me a contract and it for something and it asked me if it was for my yoga business or my sales coaching business.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And I was like, well, we are now best friends because you know, to ask me that question. And she was like, what? How did it know that you know, I mean just people don't have any clue.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:So like super cool things for sales teams that are not intuitive to salespeople who haven't been introduced to ChatGPT if they aren't good writers. But your marketing team puts out these awesome posts all the time. Rather than repost that post, copy and paste what the marketing team wrote, throw it in ChatGPT, tell it to make it in this voice and make it store, make it more of a story, then put that on your own post and make it a post. You're still talking about the same thing, but you use some AI to make it sound a little bit different and not like a marketing post. And that is, that is gold for them because for so many sales teams we are all very comfortable like being our brand and being ourself and showing up. But so many people are like, I can't write, I don't know how to write. Like that's just not something I do. Or you know, for me, like I don't love videos, but I do them.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:I fry at least. And they, they just are like petrified to put out anything that might, I don't know, spark something or make somebody look the wrong way. But that's what part of being a personal brand is, understanding that the people who relate to you will come to you and the people that you don't need as clients will be repelled by what you are posting.
Sara Lohse [:I want to even back up a little bit because something that you were saying at the beginning, just the idea of sales teams and like each person having their individual personal brand. One of the things that I've noticed is especially with like larger companies, the companies don't want that. And the companies are afraid that if like their people start posting it's going to be a problem. But they're missing such a huge opportunity because you can turn every single employee of your company into basically a lead gen source.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Absolutely.
Sara Lohse [:If you're letting them like create that personal brand.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Absolutely. And there, there are companies who get it out there and they're the ones who are in the SaaS space. And like, like some companies that I can think of that have a Strong brand on LinkedIn are like Sendoso and Send Spark. I mean there. But all of their members are presenting content on the platform. And so, but there are, like you said, so many companies still look at the platform as like a job posting board and just like a resume update, but it's become so much more than that. And I think like you said, it's, it benefits them to promote their people having a voice. And if you, if you promote that, then they will talk about your company more often.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:You know, they will talk about how good the culture is and how good they're, how much fun their co workers are and things like that. And that's good for your, for your whole business. So. But there are so many people just scared of the, like promoting the employees, just promoting themselves. Yeah, but, you know, I mean, I even think even in that aspect, like, they, people still know where that person works. So if they're creating, you know, happy culture and growing an engagement and engaged following, you know what of it? There are companies that give people like, like templated stuff to post and you can just tell every time that it's not their voice and that it's just a templated thing. So I do not love that.
Sara Lohse [:I had this conversation a couple weeks ago with Liam, who we all know from Baddest Business Summit, that companies are afraid to let their people create those personal brands and create content and become thought leaders. They're afraid that their people are going to get poached, but they're not realizing that they're going to anyway. Like, recruiters are going to recruit. That's what they do. So whether it's just based off of like, their job description or based off of their content, they're going to be like, recruiting. But if you're letting them do, like, have their own voice, have their own brand, creating that positive culture, they won't want to leave. It doesn't matter if recruiters are reaching out to them.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Exactly. And that right there, what you just said, that is the part that they, that all the companies need to get on board. Because if that is your problem, if that is what you think your problem is with LinkedIn, then your problem is much bigger than people posting on LinkedIn. That means you're, you know, you're not giving them enough of what they need. You know, they're not, you know, supporting them and making them feel comfortable. And I've seen posts about that on LinkedIn too. And I've always felt like leadership should be more concerned about you growing yourself than about keeping you there. So, like, keep growing, Keep growing and be proud of your employees when they move on to the next step, you know, I mean, don't try to keep them there by hindering their writing freedoms.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah.
Larry Roberts [:As a leader, are you not supposed to nurture and help your employees grow and then be proud of their accomplishments and their growth? I think it's a direct reflection back on the leadership. If you're not seeing that.
Sara Lohse [:I mean, the word is lead. Like, you're supposed to be leading them somewhere, not just keeping them in one spot.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:From that point, the leaders need to also be creating on LinkedIn, and that is there are so many founders, so many startups, so many brands that will come to me and be like, I want to grow my brand on LinkedIn. And I'm like, cool, start posting on your own profile. Like, now. Like, yesterday. And I just had coffee with a girlfriend this week, and we were talking about this, and she is. She's a welder, and she is starting a welding shop out of her garage. She's fantastic. I love this girl.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:She's also in sales, oddly enough. And so we were chatting, and she was like, I really want to grow my welding brand on LinkedIn. And I was like, well, sis, you got to start posting then. Like, you got to post the videos on your page. You got to post the video, post pictures, and talk about the welding, but talk about your family. She also has a young daughter who's been through cancer treatment twice. And so she has relatable things, which is funny that I just said that because I was thinking earlier about the trauma stories, because it came up in a podcast and I don't have one. Just so we know.
Sara Lohse [:Must be nice.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, yeah. I've got one for every occasion, so I just don't share them.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:You know, I got a Rolodex. Jeff's amazing. And I was like. She's like, it just feels so uncomfortable. And I was like, but the authenticity is where it makes it less uncomfortable. If you know that you are showing up as you, then what's there to worry about?
Larry Roberts [:Hey, let me. Let me jump in there real quick because you're saying, it's so uncomfortable. I want to make sure I understand what you're saying there. So your friend, your girlfriend there, doesn't want to share the story of her daughter going through cancer treatment because it feels so awkward? Is that what I heard you say?
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:No, she actually does share the story. She just doesn't share it very often. And in the context that you could use it for content on LinkedIn, like, when she has posted about it, it has been very, like, vulnerable and open and like, this just happened in the last 60 days while I haven't been here, yada, yada, where you guys haven't seen me. But those posts, you know, always gather all kinds of engagement and you know, those things are thing like wounds that other people have that they want to share with her, which is part of what, you know, a brand is A person buying from someone is buying from a person, not from a business. You know what I mean?
Larry Roberts [:All the time.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Yeah. I mean, I was talking to my. It was Liam. It was Liam. And I was like, should I be changing the name of my business to just like Ashley, that Cuer coaching? And he was like, no, because everybody's just buying Ashley Vet Cuer. They don't really care what the name of the company is anymore. Like, they don't even think about that. Which, to be fair, I don't wholeheartedly agree with that, but I do agree that it's the person like at Perc.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And I used to say that all the time. I worked for PERC for 17 years and I was like, I mean, most of my clients may leave if I leave, because they're working there because of the way I operate.
Larry Roberts [:So that's a huge challenge too, though. So I think that begs the question of how do you overcome that? You know, I was a part of a focus group last night for a networking organization here in town. And the networking organization was founded by one gentleman. He has been a part of it, he started it, and he carried it for 36 years. So do the math. He's a little older, he's having to step down. They have new leadership, but everyone is still trying to replicate his. We call it the.
Larry Roberts [:Well, I called it the. His name's Bill Wallace. The Bill Wallace effect. Because everybody came to this organization because Bill Wallace made you feel so amazing. He greeted you, he coached you, you just. All else walks the room, it just lights up. It's amazing. And now that Bill has stepped down, kind of struggling a little bit to put butts in seats.
Larry Roberts [:So that is very, very common too. I mean, my Red Hat people want to work with the Red Hat guy. So if my business is growing to the point where the Red Hat guy can't be on every call, how do you make that transition? How do you transition from the Bill Wallace effect or the Red Hat effect to actually grow your business beyond just what you can personally do?
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Honestly, I think if the. So I focused. Even I was in full cycle sales, but I focused a lot on the relationship and the connection. Because if I did that then they trusted me and when I had a new product or solution that I thought fit for them, they would accept it. I think that where it gets lost a lot nowadays is the way a sales cycle works. And if it works the same way in like a networking company or any company that somebody's building, it's like a, you set the meeting, then I'll do the meeting and then once it's closed, we'll pass it to the client. Success. You know, it's just like so broken and it's not continuous full life cycle thing.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:But for. For a founder type thing like that, where it's like everybody's coming for Bill, kind of like Bill has to start. Bill should have started 10 years ago trying to bring somebody up so that it was Bill and Kathy or you know, whatever. I mean like something else like that.
Larry Roberts [:He started bringing Casey up. But it was only two years ago. The transition was very abrupt and there was a reason for that. I mean there was some, you know, I'm not going to go too deep into it, but there was some reasons for the transition being as abrupt as it was. But now we're actually seeing that ripple effect as well within the organization.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:I was gonna say, I think if the founder can keep showing up at least once in a while and keep that even if they're retired. You know, like my dad's not really retired, but he shows up at the office all the time. And so like as long as you're just showing up sometimes and being part of like big events or something like that for as long as you can, even once you're out of the business, then it still keeps you as part of the brand and makes people feel like you believe in the upcoming. You know what I mean? Like when you are showing up around the places even after you've retired, it makes people believe in the next generation a little bit more.
Sara Lohse [:I think that also makes it position you as like this was real and this was authentic. It wasn't just for a paycheck.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. I totally agree. Well, and I think that transition to is. It's different with brand name companies, right? Like when you are basing it on your name and on your personality because I mean that's essentially what he was doing. Basing a coaching and networking community based on his personality and his magnetism to being able to draw people in. And that's not really something that everybody has. And so it's going to be hard to replicate.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And so just staying consistent in the brand a Little bit. I think totally builds that trust in what's moving forward with it, at least in my opinion. But, I mean, it's a tough one because there's plenty of places where, you know, you've seen the person step down and then they're like, oh, well, I don't really care about that company anymore. Or like, if the wrong person steps in, like, I'm a Patagonia snob. I just love the company. I love all the things that was a flower where out of control. But if, like somebody came in, what'd you say?
Larry Roberts [:I said I thought that was a flower.
Sara Lohse [:I had no idea.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Yeah, like, so you don't probably need that stuff very often, though. I did hear it was like 47 degrees there today.
Larry Roberts [:It's a little chilly. A little chilly.
Sara Lohse [:My windows are open. It's lovely.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Like, if that leader left and somebody with a new philosophy came in, then I would feel weird about it. So as long as the same philosophy is coming through too.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, the same philosophies there, I mean, throughout. And I think that's absolutely critical is to still maintain that consistency in the brand because people are dedicated to that brand. They're dedicated to that brand promise and that brand value. And we talk about podcasting a lot, and when we work with our clients to launch their podcast, one of the key things we come up with is what the unique listening proposition. And we want to make sure you deliver on that unique listening proposition for your podcast. And it's the same thing for your brand. You have to continue to deliver on that unique selling proposition or that unique brand proposition that you're offering to, whether it be your networking organization or your clients or whatever it may be.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Well, and in that front, then it is Casey. Casey. Is that right? Is that what you told me? Is the new come up? Does he do a good job of relaying his personal brand often and through that brand lens of the company?
Larry Roberts [:Well, she does an amazing job. Yes, she does an amazing job. And interestingly enough, though, and I don't typically go down this path, but it's a lot of 60 plus white males. There's a lot of white and blue hair that's in there. And so it's very, very difficult to make this transition because there is a lot of, we'll call it, tradition in this space that is very difficult to overcome.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Yeah, definitely. Well, and I mean.
Larry Roberts [:Stop all the looks, stop all the popping, stop all the.
Sara Lohse [:You get mad at me when I say something is.
Larry Roberts [:But dial it back.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:But for real, that. So part of the win is that the clientele has to change over to. The old guys are going to retire and go away and there has to be a new crowd, a new era. And when you, when you very first started telling the story, I was, I almost stopped you to say so. The first problem is that we're still doing things the exact same way we were doing things 50 years ago, 36 years ago.
Larry Roberts [:Yes.
Sara Lohse [:I feel like that's super common with groups like that. Like there's another one that we're a part of and they struggle to get younger members involved. And yet I go, and I was 28 and one of the people looks at me and says, what can I possibly learn from you at your age? You're like, you're so young. I'm like, I know. Okay, this is why you can't get younger members.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Exactly.
Sara Lohse [:You treat them like they're children.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Totally.
Larry Roberts [:It was interesting last night because we had a 25 year old guy there on the focus in the focus group as well. And it literally got testy, like it got confrontational because the little 25 year old, I say little, he's a great guy. And I don't mean to be disrespectful to him at all. John, you're a great guy. Sorry. The younger 25 year old gentleman expressed his, his feelings on how the group treats Gen Xers and, and younger individuals. And then of course, one of the older individuals instantly contested that you're speaking for an entire generation and I have kids that are your age and younger and they don't feel the way you feel in your general. Dude, it just exploded.
Larry Roberts [:It was insane. And I was like, oh my God, I did not expect to see this tonight. But it's. It, there's so much resistance. I don't even know what the. I almost said the F word. I don't know where this conversation is going. I think it's valuable, but somehow I hijacked it with the whole thing there.
Sara Lohse [:But this has become a coaching call for Casey and she's not even. We'll send you an invoice when you listen.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Really important. Even back to like the story of branding and all that kind of stuff. If you can speak to all generations on a team, then you are winning and you are ahead of other people for sure. And so I actually have found that one of my niches kind of is sales teams like that. So like the one I did in Austin, I had 70 year olds in the room who we were building their LinkedIn page for the very first time. And I had 25 year olds in the room who had a nice one built and understand what it should look like to be put together but don't really use it. Like they still use it as just a resume holder. And so teaching all of those people in the room at the same time and most of them are on the higher end like 50, 60, 70.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:But honestly, since that was a month ago, since then it has been three of the older gentlemen. Gentlemen who have reached out to me to ask for more help. So it's the young kids thinking that the old guys don't know how to do it and like treating them that way. And it's the old guys thinking that the kids have all the tricks and tools, which we do and we'll talk about that next, but that they don't understand them and they don't want to try. So if the guys don't want to try and don't want to try to be a part of the new age, then of course the young guys are going to be like, forget you.
Larry Roberts [:Then yeah, sure.
Sara Lohse [:The old guys, the old dog, new tricks, ideology. Yeah, like what am I gonna learn?
Larry Roberts [:At this point I'm feeling like I probably should have dyed my beard before we got on this call. I mean, I'm just thinking because I'm looking like one of the old guys today, I, I need some just for men going here to help me out. But hey, let's, let's transition over to some of those tools.
Sara Lohse [:Speaking of the unique listening proposition, that's what we promised at the beginning of the episode.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:About that when you said that, I was like we're going way off.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, let's, let's go to some of those tools because you, you mentioned several while we were in the green, green room there and I think it'd be great to share those with our audience as well. So what, what, what's one of the tools that you just, you just love that most folks don't know about?
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Well, so people know about sending cookies and food. Two of the things are gifting platforms because I loved gifting clients. So part of what I'm trying to teach sales teams is cold calls and crappy marketing emails are not going to do the job anymore. You have got to do better than that and reach out to the person a little bit more. And so there is a company called Grove Cookie Company and they are veteran and female owned and they are out of Oregon and you can order them branded with stickers and stuff like that to send to your customers in these little four packs in these cute little boxes. And it's so simple. And it's like literally no one doesn't like cookies. And if they don't like cookies, they absolutely know someone who does and they will still appreciate the gift.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And so it's a really great company just to support. And I support them also because the owner, Grayson, shows up on LinkedIn and uses his presence on LinkedIn, which, what a genius. A bunch of business businesses that need to send gifts to people. And that's how he's growing his business. So and it's nice to like send them to clients and then the clients get hooked on them and go to them, go to Grayson also. But I never would have known about that without being on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is a super important tool too. But the gifting king of the business is a company called Sendoso.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:In my opinion, there are other competitors, but Sendoso is fantastic. They, first of all, very intuitive gifting platform for companies that they can sign up and be able to have all their employees have a certain budget that if they want to send a gift, they can go in and pick a gift and send it off to their client. But recently they released this AI tool that like totally blew my mind because I love gifting and. But sometimes it's hard if people don't have a lot out there about themselves. I mean, Google can find out a lot, but you want to be intentional with the gift, right?
Larry Roberts [:Sure.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And so this, I think it's called Alice, but I might be wrong about that. Alice by sendoso. I could be wrong. Anyway, you can take it, you can take it to somebody's profile and it can analyze their profile and suggest a gift for that person. And I think it even maybe suggests multiple gifts in multiple, multiple price ranges.
Larry Roberts [:Sure.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:But it's like, it's just not something everybody thinks about. Even if you have like chess champion in your headline, some people might not think like, oh well, why would I send a chess champion? Something about chess. But they probably love chess. So just send them something like that and Sendosa will just like tell you that quick and you can do it on mass scale. You know, like you can have it look up a company's profile and it suggests a gift. So like for custom, for their, for their people. Super cool. Super cool.
Sara Lohse [:It's really interesting. There's a platform that I use that is not nearly that like, it's kind of more the opposite. It's called Sugar Wish. And yeah, they have like whole different, all different categories of gifts from like cookies and sweets. And candles and wine tastings, like all of these different stuff. And like dog treats, coffee, tea. And they have vegan options, like gluten free options, like all of this different stuff. And then the non food things for people who are just like stay away from all of it.
Sara Lohse [:But instead of you picking, you send a size gift to someone and they get to go in and pick what they want.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Yes.
Sara Lohse [:And it like ships.
Larry Roberts [:Didn't we get that?
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Yes.
Larry Roberts [:Aaliyah.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah. Aleyah Harris sent us send us one. And then I started using it and I've sent it. I use that to send as like referral gifts and stuff.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Okay, well, can we put that in like show notes or something? Because I can't write it down right now.
Larry Roberts [:Yes, it will be in the show notes.
Sara Lohse [:Yes.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Thank you. Well, so I think for salespeople in particular, part of what makes Sendo so different than that is you are. And I mean, don't get me wrong, I love platforms like that too. Like anything that I can just send to somebody as an easy gift to show that I am giving some extra thought to it is great. But there is a sense of I'm putting the onus on the person to pick. And while the intentionality is still there.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:What really grabs in the mess of salespeople, what really grabs somebody's attention is if you figured out something personal to them and picked it yourself and nailed it. You know what I mean? Like that there's no doubt that dude is going to call you if you figure it out or that that chick isn't going to like blow you up as soon as she's like, oh my God, this is the Barbie doll I've been looking for for my whole life.
Larry Roberts [:Yep.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:You know what I mean?
Sara Lohse [:So gifting has been a really successful avenue for you. Is there anything else in the, like, out of the box that outside of gifting that you recommend?
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:So the other one that I really like to use is called Crystal Nose. I feel like it's Enneagram. It uses Enneagram to tell you about your person and so you can go to somebody's LinkedIn profile. Like let's say I needed to ask you if I could be on the podcast. I would take my Crystal nose to your LinkedIn profile or to. I think I bet by now you can do it on like somebody's YouTube channel or podcast or maybe anything like that. I usually use it on LinkedIn, so that's why I'm saying I'm not real sure, but it would tell me based on what it knows from your profile what enneagram style it thinks you are. And then from there it lets me say, I need to send an email to Sara to.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:It has a couple options in the dropdown, but it's like set a meeting, ask for sponsorship, something like that. And then AI will tell you how to word that email a little bit and then you can make it your own. And so it's super helpful when you maybe have already closed a meeting but want to know what someone's meeting style is maybe going to be like? So do you need to come in direct with like a list of organized things to do, or do you need to come in and be open and be like, so let's hear about your ideas. Tell me what you got. Because personalities will take those differently. And that first moment, if you can be in their personality style and be grooving with them through the whole meeting, you're so much more likely to get anywhere with them because you're identifying with their personality style. You know, like you can identify that, then your success rate is going to be a lot higher. So it's a great tool for that and for salespeople who are trying to like make massive connection all the time.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Because I truly don't believe like through LinkedIn, through Crystal knows through things like that, like straight up cold calling a list of a thousand people should not really be a thing anymore.
Sara Lohse [:Like surprise.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Identify your best hundred targets instead and work those. The other one I want to talk about only because it's a really, it's a, it's a really cool tool to be able to get video out there and like individualized video dms to your customers because video is so like on the rise that you gotta like get on the train at some point. And I have had extremely high success rates with video dms to get attention and to get somebody to respond. And so I believe in it. There's a company called senspark that you can create with AI a video saying what you want to say, that's like a pitch kind of, and only record it once. And then the AI, you say watermelon. And then the AI changes watermelon to the person's name everywhere in the video, but really you're still saying watermelon in the background. So you can kind of tell on some names, but it's so outside the box that it actually, I mean it works, it gets attention because nobody's even really sending personal DMs, let alone like company, like huge levels of DMs, you know, like thousands at A time or something like that.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:So from a sales aspect and from a business aspect, that way, if you're trying to reach a ton of people, it's a great way to go. Like, if you're trying to imagine. If you're trying to prospect like a Fortune 500 or something like that. And you can build a list of your. If you're pitching a sales tool and build a list of all the sales people that work in that building and then send a video DM that talks about your product with their name at the front that they have no idea. Wasn't personalized. I mean, that's. It's kind of gold.
Sara Lohse [:My thing, though, like, I'm one of those people that I just hate doing videos. I'm like, I do this for a living. I do video podcasts every single day. But when there's no one on the other side, I just, I can't do it.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:It's because. And I even heard you guys say this in one of the other podcasts as a, like, using it as a describing term. But it's because of the talking head syndrome. I do not enjoy having my camera sitting in front of me and just talking to my camera. Right? Like, that just doesn't. It just feels weird to me. But I have made videos with, like, cap cut and some things like that, doing, like, voiceovers. So like, me doing yoga on fast speed or something like that.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And I talk about, like, I just talk, do a voiceover on the video. So like just the talking head videos, super uncomfortable for me. If I can, like, be creative with it and turn it into a different video, then I like that. But it takes a lot of time. And so I'm like, how can I do this more efficiently? I don't know. And so one of the things that I'm kind of known for on LinkedIn, one of my, like, little branding things that I started doing a while back is I do, like, I'll pop on and do a video that is like a breathing, like taking a deep breath together. So, like, getting settled in like you in a yoga class, roll your shoulders back, breathe in, close your eyes, all that. And then we usually just do one breath, maybe two, and that's it.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And those I am comfortable with because I'm doing something that other people are, like, responding to, even though I don't get to see their response. So that feels comfortable. But the other stuff is just. I don't know when I'm just, like, standing here telling you what an expert I am at a bunch of things I don't know. This doesn't work for me.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah, I've just been. Instead of like creating videos specifically for platforms, I just cut up the videos I'm in for podcasts and post those. So that, that's like my baby step into this.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:That's good though. That's good. Another one of your podcasts, the guy was on here who I'm going to go follow on LinkedIn, but he was talking about the video feed, which you guys knew that LinkedIn had, and he didn't even really know yet, but it is like an Instagram style reels feed like that. If your video gets sucked into that feed, it is ridiculous. Oh, this is funny. Since this is what we're just talking about. I was like, salespeople, you've got to follow up on your leads. Even if you sent me a contract, it might be sitting there.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:And it's not that I'm ignoring it, it's that my kid needs chicken nuggets and my dog needs let out and I got shit to do. So then it's down here in my inbox and I can't see it anymore. And so you got to come back and be like, hey, hey, don't forget. You know what I mean? And that's what. That's all the video was. It was like 30 seconds. It got half a million views.
Sara Lohse [:Damn right.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:It's like, but you ha. It's that no one. There is no magic sauce to getting sucked into that feed. It's just like some random algorithm popping people in and out. I feel like so, but so I try to do them sometimes. But even, you know, like, going viral is not really all it's cracked up to be. And it may get you a ton of eyeballs, but it's not really bringing relationships or anything like that. Like, I don't even have TikTok first of all, but another creator on LinkedIn who kind of is the male version of me, like sales guy and you know, trying to help teach social selling.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:He tried TikTok for a while about six months ago and like your other guest said he got lots of views, but it, all the, all the comments and all the engagement he said was awful and like so rude and like just people saying mean things or people not caring and things like that. And that is why us, like LinkedIn people are so devoted to LinkedIn because it is like super supportive people who are actually really smart and wise and have good, good advice and good things to say. And it's not trolls, you know what I mean? Like, it's just. It's usually not. I mean, there's some dudes that get on chicks pages sometimes and say stupid. Like, well, maybe if you would just get yourself a good man, you wouldn't have to work so hard.
Sara Lohse [:Hey, has that ever worked for anyone?
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:I don't know.
Sara Lohse [:It's like, has anyone ever married the guy who was like, cat calling them at a construction site? I don't understand. I don't understand. No, I just don't.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:But on that note, where other people.
Sara Lohse [:Can see you, like your boss can see you. But on that note, where can people find out more about you, get in touch with you, all the things.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:The best, best place to find me is LinkedIn. I'm there every day. I post almost every day. So that's the best place to get a hold of me. And also the best place to, like, learn more about me because I post very authentically and vulnerably all the time. You can find out all kinds of stuff there. I do have a website, salespark, coaching.com. it is not prepared quite yet, but it is in the works.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:So that would be a good place to eventually. Yes.
Sara Lohse [:Larry is generally the king of these closes because he's really good at Segways. I am not. So with that, he's Larry Roberts. I'm Sara Lohse and we'll talk to you next week.
Ashley Beck Cuellar [:Good job, Good job.
