#15 From Stuck to Scaling Industrial Sales with AI

From Stuck to Scaling: How Industrial SMEs Can Thrive with AI, CRM & Smarter Sales Strategies | Fabio Danze Montini

Discover how small and medium-sized industrial businesses can break through growth barriers and scale successfully with the right mix of strategy, sales intelligence, and AI-driven tools! In this exclusive interview from the Thomas Ross's SOAR Inc. x Workplace AI series, we sit down with Fabio Danze Montini, founder of FTM Industrial Sales & Marketing and creator of the FDM Method™, a proven approach that helps companies increase sales by 30%+.

🎯 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The BIG differences in sales culture between Europe and North America — and how SMEs can catch up.
• Why AI isn’t replacing salespeople, but salespeople who use AI will replace those who don’t.
• How Fabio’s proprietary K2B (Knowledge to Business) system transforms technical know-how into scalable commercial success.
• The truth about CRMs: why most fail, and how to build a CRM culture that works.
• Why Fabio invented the term “Market Selling” — blending digital marketing with hands-on sales outreach.
• How one 84-year-old sales legend beats 30-year-olds at the digital game!

💡 Key Takeaways for B2B Sales & Industrial Marketing Pros:

• Modern sales teams need both analog and digital firepower — LinkedIn, email automation, and AI-enhanced CRMs are game-changers.
• Stop chasing cold leads — focus on staying top-of-mind with the 97% of contacts who aren’t ready yet through automated touchpoints.
• Sales productivity hacks: how voice-to-CRM tools, real-time transcription, and AI summarizers save 90% of your admin time.
• How to turn knowledge into revenue by organizing your customer data, segmenting your audience, and delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.

🛠️ Tools & Techniques Mentioned:

• LinkedIn for B2B outreach
• Email automation & segmentation
• CRM platforms with AI integration
• Conversational AI coaching
• Workplace AI & AI-assisted lead generation

👨‍🏫 About Fabio Danze Montini:
With over 35 years of experience, Fabio is a recognized authority in industrial sales transformation, leading digitization efforts for SMEs across Europe. His FDM Method™ combines strategic marketing, technology, and high-performance training to help companies dominate their markets rather than simply compete.

🌐 Connect with Fabio:

• Website & Free Sales Diagnostic: https://fabiodanze.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/fabiodanze

📈 Who Should Watch This?

• Industrial business owners and sales leaders looking to modernize
• B2B marketing professionals targeting manufacturing clients
• Sales reps ready to future-proof their careers with digital tools
• CRM implementers and AI enthusiasts in the B2B space

🔔 Subscribe for more insights on industrial AI, sales growth strategies, and the digital transformation of SMEs. If you’re ready to stop being reactive and start scaling, this is your roadmap.

Escucha el knowcast de los peaky marketers : https://www.buzzsprout.com/1811829/episodes

Transcript

Another influencer episode in our series with SOAR Inc. and Workplace AI. Today, we have another exciting guest, Mr. Fabio Donzei Montini. Did I get that right, Fabio? Everything, everything okay, as always, as always. Well, let me give you a little bit of an intro in any case. As the owner of FTM Industrial Sales and Marketing, Fabio brings over 35 years of experience in industrial sales and marketing that transforms the commercial area of business for SMEs.
Through the FDM method, they help companies increase sales by 30% or more with a proven lead generation system. Fabio's approach focuses on introducing AI and innovative technologies. with structured methodologies to increase revenue, reduce expenses, and dominate the market rather than react to it. Fabio is also the founder of Demo Marketing and a couple of other organizations, and leads digitization and industrial marketing initiatives for small and medium businesses.
Welcome, Fabio, and where are we speaking to you from today? I'm speaking from Andorra, that for many people is a place that is unknown where it's located, but is in the middle of the mountains between Spain and France. So we are fresh right now. Meanwhile, all Spain is heating up. We are fresh for the moment, for the moment. Right.
So what's the weather? Like, is your season summer as well? Yes. The season is the same, but we are 1,000 meter of the level of the sea. So normally here it's a little bit fresh than the other territories in Spain and France also. In south of France, it's also very hot normally when arrived the summertime. Nice. Nice and watch. More fresh to use the brain.
It's not eat enough. Well, listen, thank you so much for taking the time today. We really wanted to speak to you about what you're doing with respect to your clients and your customers and your business model. I think one of the things I wanted to start with from your perspective and give me some sense of it, do you think that there's a difference between the sales methodologies, the processes, and the tools vis-a-vis Europe and your neck of the woods versus North America?
Oh, okay. The first difference is mainly instead of speaking about countries, the biggest difference between my target customers, which are small and medium industrial company making machinery or, high technology or we can say with a lot of issues that you have to explain to the customers.
So it's complex, complex sales. Now, concerning the difference between United States and Europe, obviously, we are maybe one step behind, in Europe because the technology and the sensibility to preparation is not the same that you have in U.S., at least the south of Europe. Because in the north of Europe, the sensibilities, England is Anglo-Saxon culture, so they are more or less at the same way of thinking about the sales job as in the United States.
In Germany, they are also upfront compared with the South of Europe. To make an example, to be agent in Germany, you have to make three years, study three years, and then you have to make a practicum of three months. And in Spain, when I started, you only have to have two friends that say, "Yeah, yes, he is a salesman."
This was 30 years ago, 30 years ago. Now you make an example of eight hours, but it's 16 hours. But I mean, I always say that mostly in the south of Europe, when somebody get into the sales, profession, he occupy himself. He's not the profession, he's occupying doing something different, you know? So it's changing.
But we are still in that mood. So for giving another big difference, every company in the United States, even the smallest one, think about coaching as a way to power, and boost the potential abilities of the salesman. I don't know anybody of my customers that constantly make coaching to their sales.
Part of their process, yeah. 20 years ago, I remember a phrase, I remember a sentence of a customer of mine that told me, "Do you want me to teach my salesman to, to be better and then they go away. I told him, I told him, sorry, but if your thought is everybody's thought to think like you, the next one that you come in is the same, is bad as the guy that is going out.
If you never invest in somebody that is, is improving the sales. So it's not easy to promote new tools, new technology, integration, mostly for the area of sales in small and medium industrial company. Then tech company, pharmaceutical and everything are at the same level, I think, as United States, more or less. Right, right. I hear you. I know when we were talking earlier, you were speaking in those terms and.
And what you spoke to is also different in that it seems in Europe, they still use a lot of agencies and they use a lot of manufacturing sales agents and those kinds of mechanisms within the market. Whereas here in North America, that's much less the case these days than it was a decade ago. So that's a difference as well. Yes, because imagine that, When somebody starts to produce machines, he normally sell to 40 million people to 80 million people is the biggest market, like Germany or France.
When somebody starts to produce machines in the United States, he has 250 million countries with a higher level of powerful purchasing power. And also, I mean, all the dimensions are completely different. So when somebody here that is a small company and start to produce some technology, want to go even at the door behind, which is France's one hour driving from Barcelona, they have to equip themselves because they have to prepare themselves to speak French, to make all the documentation in French and everything.
So, the way to grow is different and many times small companies remain small because they are acting only in a local market. Now, after 20 years of European community, obviously the people are starting to adapt to this new situation and most of the company they sell also outside the, the frontier of their own country, but it's not easy.
I mean, it's not easy like in the United States. And companies are small, they cannot hire sales reps at wage. So they have to to work with some somebody that is out of the company and it's difficult to transfer the value. Right, right. I also noticed that, your methodology and your system that you've developed, which you call K2B, is also different.
Can you explain K2B a little bit to us? Yeah, K2B comes from knowledge to business instead of business to consumer or business to business. Right. Why? Because, Just for this reason that is not so easy to transfer the knowledge and the issues that are very important, the benefit that are very important for the end user through a distribution network that is not every day working with you because they are many, many representation companies.
So they know something of, everybody, only with the years that they develop more knowledge, but it's very difficult to arrive to the end user and analyze their needs and find a way to transfer the real value that we can give to them. Also, if you don't have technology, if you don't have new tools to do it because.
The sales reps, they don't make reports or they don't explain how they solve. It's very difficult that it spreads all over the organization, even inside the company. So that sounds like the same problem there as we have here, in that salespeople famously are not administratively strong. And therefore, They're not very likely to put the data and the information in the system. Is that right? Is that a common challenge?
This is the, this morning I made a two hours training to industrial companies and we were speaking about CRM. And one of the big problems they're facing is that many times that sales reps interpret the CRM as a control system and, Double work, you know? Yeah, I just know what I know. Why I have to write down. So this is, I mean, this is common everywhere, I think.
Sure. This is because I think that before installing a CRM or choosing a CRM, you have to install the culture of CRM in the head of the people and say, why? Why you have to use it, which is the benefit for you? Which is, at the end, the way that everybody then use it. Because if they don't see what they can do with the tool, maybe they don't use it because they only see the ugly part of the job.
And they don't realize that by using it effectively, they're increasing their own revenue. They're increasing revenue because they can share experience, they can remember things that they can't, I always make the picture of old Macintosh. pen drive and the MS-DOS, the first one. Right, right, right. Are there any company in the world that are working with these tools? They normally have a very high performance computer.
They have high storage and they have the last operating systems. Why? Because you need it. So if you need it, to run accounting, to run technical issue. Why don't you run also the sales issue with a tool like this? And you have a salesman, a sales rep, that has not training, so he's with the tools that he had from the experience, and he has a limited memory.
If you have a CRM, you expand your memory at whatever, so you can remember what happened with a customer of yours or with the customer of the previous sales rep that was in touch with that customer 10 years ago, 15 years ago. On the contrary, it's impossible that they remember everything, all the details. No, it's true also that 15 years ago, if I had to write down everything, it was a hard job.
But now, with the tools that we have available, with the tools that also source improving, you can make a transcript and put everything in a CRM in five seconds. So, I mean, now it's easier. So the part of the hurdle of the, write everything, and half an hour to register everything is out, because now I have the tool to do it in five minutes.
Yes. In fact, you have a tool that can do it in real time for you while you're still in the meeting, right? You can simply have your phone running and recording, or you're recording the video call, whatever the case may be, and it's already doing that for you. In fact, it'll send the follow-up email once you're done. Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, there's not an excuse anymore? No, no, but the same challenge exists in that we need to help salespeople and organizations see the value and implement those kinds of workflows and train their people so they.
can quickly and easily do that. And I know you've got a sales methodology and a process that includes the inclusion of where technology comes in and how. Did you want to talk a little bit about that, Fabio? Yes. As I see here in the background, I have, we can say the cycle, the commercial cycle is almost the same. Right. I divide the cycle in five phases.
The first phase is the strategic marketing. And this is one of the first points that we have to highlight that are many small and medium industrial companies, they don't know who is their ideal customer. So when I asked them, "Who is your ideal customer?" I said, "Everyone." So when everyone, everyone, it's very difficult to focus. Right.
What do you, what are the arguments that you are using to promote our machine as many servo motors, and we are faster, so we are very reliable. I mean, every-- I mean, all things that you cannot transform in euros. You cannot transform in money. So if you are-- if you cannot transform in money, this value is-- you don't know how much is.
So you cannot-- you cannot speak to the customer to convince him that your solution is valuable for him. This is the first phase when you determine your positioning, your unique value proposal, your ideal customer, the right message to reach the customer and how to reach the customer. The second part is to find which is this profile and make investigations. So normally the average.
industrial, not small and medium industrial company, they use the sheriff tactics. The sheriff is, I shoot everywhere, I will get something. It's easy at the very beginning, because with one or two customers, you can survive, but then when you grow, it's very difficult to maintain, to throw away so many efforts. marketing efforts.
And this is, this is the third part, which is the operative marketing. So in this part is where there is the new technology coming in, artificial intelligence coming in, but there is anybody coming in to do it because in the small and medium company, there are the sales rep. And the sales rep is good when he's in the street. Now it is a tone to making emails, to get in contact with LinkedIn and so on.
So, six years, seven years ago, I hire a guy to do it because when I started, I'm 16, so when I started 40 years ago, my marketing tools were the issue, specialized issue that anybody read, the thread shop, which is still the best way to get in contact with the customer because you have two ways, contact and touching the product.
And then knocking on the door, may I come in? And even if in that time it was easier that the people get you in, let you in, nowadays it's impossible anybody, anybody can receive you if you don't have a real interest in your product. So, At the same time, now we have a lot of possibilities to get in contact with the customers. So email, emailing, LinkedIn, social networks, and so on, post, YouTube, video, sales, same, everything.
So this is a job. It's impossible that a sales rep do everything of that to get in contact with the customer. So, I thought it was necessary that somebody do that for the salesman. It's also true that this activity do not sell anything. I mean, marketing in my area, my customer's environment do not sell, do not convert and do not sell anything.
But it's also true that the sales reps without the supports, Of this activity, they sell 50% because they are not able to handle all those contacts and create a relationship through a digital contact. So I create a word that is market selling. I registered. I have also the domain because I think that it's the real.
the reality of the small and medium industrial company. Market selling is not marketing, is not selling. It's one function where there are somebody that do the digital, the digital job and another one that make the analogic job going in the street and visiting the cast. Sure, sure. And it's a combination of the two. Exactly. One support the other because I, this person, The first thing that he did when he came in was arrange the CRM.
Right. There are a lot of companies that even do not have the CRM. So these guys is responsible to create a database where I can segment, make segmentation of my market because not ever, it's not the same thing to sell. I don't know. a rewinding machine to somebody that is making paper or somebody that is making plastic and even different kind of plastic, different kind of thickness.
So if I send an email to somebody that make paper and I speak about plastic, it's very, very, it's easy that you're going into the garbage one day or another. So you have, to send the information later. Sure, sure. And that's where the market research comes in, the ICP comes in, and the knowledge between the two brings it together. And today with technology, we can make that faster and expedite the process so that it's much smoother and quicker and we can have our sales teams talking to more people daily today than we ever could before.
Is that a fair statement? Yes, this is very important. So. Let me ask you something, in your experience and on that basis, and I realized there's distances and there's different methodologies by way to talk to customers. So I don't want to take anything out of the picture, but whether a salesperson is speaking to a customer by phone or by video or in person or at an event, how many customer conversations, Should a salesperson be having today, Fabio, on a daily basis?
I spoke, I will tell you something that is very hard. I spoke with the mother of a friend of mine, 84 years old. She's still looking for new agencies. Wow. They put in LinkedIn open to work. And one day she asked me, Fabio, I want to understand something about this, about artificial intelligence.
How can I use it? And so I asked her exactly this, how many, how many conversation you have on the monthly basis with a customer that is relevant? I mean, and she told me, but, By phone? By phone, by visit. I mean, relevant conversation, 40, 40 per month. Okay. So I told her, 40 conversation. And after the conversation, do you make a report?
Yes. Do you make an email to the customer? Yes. So how much time do you spend to do that? And she told me, from 30 to 45, sometimes even one hour. Okay. Each. Let's speak about 20 minutes. So I told her, every month you are using 20 hours of your times, which is almost three days on 25.
Look, doing this job. So 40 to me is a great number. Depend on what you sell. Yeah, it's all relative, sure. But obviously, if you sell something that is very fast, even transactional, you have to make much more, but a very short one. If we are talking about interviews of one hour or two hours, 40 is a good number.
And for a woman of 84, it's. But she's a case of study, I think. Okay. At the end, I told her 20 hours for you, for you, are almost three days, more than 10% of the time. Sure. How much do you sell? How much do you invoice per year? She told me 300,000. Okay. I just give you as a present 35,000 euro, because you can use this device, you can record everything and do it instead of in 20 hours, you can do it in two hours.
Right. But this is, I think, is an average. Then there are many people that say, "Oh, okay, he's a friend. I don't record anything." So it's important when you make the first and the second interview. So I would say maybe 20, 20 per. Right. Between 15 and 20 per. Right. So I think your example of the 84-year-old lady, the entrepreneur, she's got the right idea.
And she's going on, you know, doing things the right way as opposed to the 25 or 30-year-old who's doing half of that. Yeah, yeah. And then complaining because there's too much time involved to do this, that, or the other thing, right? And I can't be bothered to. So it's always a mindset, isn't it? Yes. And when we realize that our productivity comes from talking to customers and not about writing to them necessarily, then we know we can be much more effective by using these tools.
But at the end of the day, if you're not talking to two to three customers every single day, What are you doing? Right. Yeah. And that becomes the focus. And with your sales training and methodology, how do you build that in, and I don't want to say enforcement, but accountability and opportunity with respect to the sales teams that you train to take advantage of these tools? How do you get them enthusiastically and energetically using it?
Well, first of all, I have to say that one of the struggling that are facing the salesman is mostly in the company, they have to sell machines, is to create new opportunities. This is one of the biggest problems they have. If they are salesman, they sell repetitive products. I mean, they have a turnover with the same customer every year because they sell consumable or something that is cyclical.
I mean, you can get order everywhere. You should focus on cross-selling or up-selling. But when you have to create new opportunities, what I always suggest to my customer is to create this new. this new, we can say, position inside the commercial area, which is this support. Because since when we started to do it, after one year, two years, making the, putting in, working the marketing machines, actually, I don't have to create any opportunities.
The opportunities come from the marketing. And this is because when you create this new concept, Insight, that is not a new concept in all the companies. It's only in this kind of company, I mean. And this guy controlled the database, segmented the database, make emailing every two months. It's not necessarily too much, every two months, but continuously, two months, two months, three years.
Then the customer comes to you because of the law of familiarity and the law of authority. And you don't need to go and knock on the door because the customer ask for your assessment. In this case, the salesman is grateful to use these kind of tools and to. When the customer go to another kind of business, which is the upselling or cross-selling, obviously, it would be also very grateful if I put in the machine, instead of creating new opportunities, I create.
new offers or new promotions that maintain the customer alive. So you have a reason to call it. Because sometimes the customer, if they are purchasing a product, they keep purchasing it, but they don't ask for anything else. There are many companies that are not, they don't know really, Which is the range of product you can serve to them.
So this is another way to be in touch with them, to let them know that a part of what you are purchasing, there are other things. But the salesman normally do it when it's face to face. They don't do it systematically. So this is another way to develop the business using new technology, artificial intelligence or whatever. We have in our hands to be more, to have more speed doing this activity, but have to be somebody that stay in the company, not somebody that is in the street.
So for the people that are in the street, they are looking for this support. And obviously, they also should be aware that the biggest capital they have, is their own knowledge. So they should invest. But I know that in the United States, the average of investment of the salesman is $2,500, $3,000 per year in his person as a salesman.
Right. I think that if we make a distribution, of normal distribution of the salesman here in the south of Europe, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, we are very close to zero. So it's changing. I mean, have to change because the challenging is so hard that you know that you are out. I have a salesman that he used.
Used the telephone, but he don't use the apps, so only used to speak. Right. It's just difficult to send an email through the telephone. And he told me, Fabio, I'm retired since two, five years ago, because I keep working, but it's very difficult to work if you don't use the new technology. Technology, sure, sure. So that's one of the things. In addition to that, with respect to that reaching so many people, at a higher level so that you can get more meetings and more appointments and more sales calls.
We can do that using social media and we can do that using LinkedIn and other ways. And we can do that using AI with that, getting the information in front of the right people at the right time for the right reasons, just like you and I are right now. We're a curry that we hope is valuable insight, for different people that they can leverage and utilize in their business and then take advantage of those processes.
And those same numbers apply that you told that your 84-year-old customer and client, who's amazing, in that when we develop and utilize lead generation using AI, we are saving all of that time of our manual and personal use, and letting technology bring those warm opportunities to us rather than chasing people around who may or may not have been interested in the first place.
So AI and digital marketing and all these tools that I know you use quite, quite, quite aggressively allow us to reach a lot more people so that getting back to what you said earlier, now I can have three and five meetings a day with interest. people. And I don't have to do all of that grunt and laborious work that I used to in the past. And when I do have those meetings, that data, that information is going right in my CRM, and we can get better and better at how we do it.
I can add conversational AI, which will help me role play and coach me. And actually, as I go into the meeting, I can say I'm going to be meeting with John Smith of ABC Manufacturing. Can you tell me a little bit about them and what my best approach is? And the conversational AI can answer my question verbally and conversationally, right? So these are cost effective. They're not expensive tools, but they're all there today.
And for salespeople, and I know lots are listening and will be listening, if you're not using those kinds of technologies, then I'm going to make a very bold statement. In six months, you will no longer be in sales. It's possible. In six months, you will no longer be in sales. So if you don't get to the point where you're investing, $3,000 a year, which is really, when you think about your career and what you need to do as an individual to improve is very little, but nonetheless, it needs to be done.
And if you're waiting for your organization to come in with all this magic technology that's going to save your **** good luck with that, right? Yeah, that's right. But you can do it. You don't have to wait. You know, Fabio is there teaching, right, and showing new systems and, and working with different systems that do that. Is that a fair statement? And what would you recommend salespeople coming into sales today or that have been in sales for a while and have gotten behind with some of these technologies?
What would you recommend and what's their opportunity? Fabio. My opinion is that, you know that Jeff Blount said that we have four intelligence. So there is one that is natural intelligence that we can do nothing. But the other three, we can do something. So the first one is what you can learn.
You have to keep learning. So keep learning new techniques, read books, instead of hearing songs, to listen to a podcast or something like this. The second is the tech intelligence because everything you learn, if you are not tech savvy, you will do it slower, so somebody will pass over you with the technology.
And the last one is the psychological intelligence, emotional intelligence and also this one you can learn about. And, These tools of AI that suggest you, "Hey, you did not get the pain point of the customer, you should ask this question." So you learn about how to deal with the customers through a 24/7 coach that can teach you in your language. And you don't need to have a Fabio inside. Because you have a machine that do it, you know.
Right, right. Or a few dollars. So you don't have to pay those $3,000 to me. You can do it with $50 with you. Well, you know, irrespective, it's about learning and putting those tools in place and getting that opportunity brought to you so that you can make the most of it and have a very powerful sales career and go forward. You know, there's, I get asked this question, I'm sure you do. on a regular basis, AI, is it gonna take my sales job?
And we all say, I think a similar thing these days, and that is no, AI is not gonna take your sales job, but another salesperson who's taken the time to learn and aggressively use AI, he or she, they're gonna take your sales job, right? And so they should, because if you're not doing this, As I say, six months, you're done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, there is another big point, I think, concerning this.
I mean, the point of view of the most of the people is that they are focusing on the hot opportunities. I mean, when I make this marketing campaign, I focus on the 3% of the people that will purchase during the campaign. But in my work, in the world of technology, of machinery, and when the customer purchase once a year or once every five years, the most important is not that 3%, but it's the 97% that don't purchase today.
If I forget them, and I don't put inside in a marketing system like what I've designed with this method, you will lose it. He will forget you. So this is the way also to use the artificial intelligence to automate this periodical contact, you know? to have, if there is somebody in the database that I don't get in touch in six months, please send an email.
We are here, or do you remember what we spoke the last time and reading? I mean, the rather way now to get in contact with a lot of customers. And if you have a BigBase, BigBase for me is 500 or 1,000, it's not 1 million. When you, when you control, you, then you don't have to prospect anymore because you have just all the people. I'll make an example. I sell extruders, blown extruders.
Right. In Spain and Portugal, there are 140 companies doing that. When you found 140 companies and you call to them to know who is the people in charge, or you look in LinkedIn, it's three months. In three months, you can find 140 companies. So starting from that point is only a job of systematic, get in touch, visit, go to show, and stay in contact to be there when there is the first opportunity to sell something.
Obviously then if your product is very bad, we are not philosophal stones, but we can be there to have one opportunity anyway. Right. You know, back when I started in sales and you're speaking to exactly the same thing, we did it the old fashioned way, right? So when we had a call, we would write it down on, we had follow up cards and we would fill up the follow up cards. And we would put them in basically a system that we would follow up on the taste.
It was all manual, but it was cards. But I knew that every card that I filled out was worth 150 bucks to me. Exactly. Right? And so when I filled it out and then I followed it up and it got to the next stage, now it was worth 500 bucks to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so on. The only difference today is we're not using cards, we're using digital systems. It's automated, it's doing it for me, but I still have to put in the time and the effort to make that impactful as I reach out to those customers.
Only now I can do it much more efficiently. Even with respect to reaching out and finding those 300 or 140 companies that you described, I can find them now with AI in about 18 seconds, right? Yeah, yeah. I've got all the contacts. I can create a reach out program on AI through Workplace AI and other methodologies that allow me to reach them initially with events or information or what have you and start that process within 10 minutes.
And now I'm in that process. And these things are all right there at my fingertips. They're not expensive. They're not complicated, but they are new. Right? You know what I tell people, Fabio? It's like this. You know, 15 years ago, if we wanted to start a cellular phone company, we had to go and buy fiber optic cable, hopefully, and we're replacing copper, and we're putting fiber optic cable into the ground. We got to dig it all out, neighborhood by neighborhood, and we got to put it in.
And then we got to solicit. and go out to all the users and say, use our system because it's this or that or the other thing. And it was a very arduous, manual, capital intensive system. And I relate that to what sales was. Now, it's all satellites, right? We don't have to put anything in. Now I'm just bouncing it off on one of Elon's or somebody else's satellite, and I can provide you the service and then bundle all those other things in, and I can reach you.
just as quickly and in the same manner by those same satellites. So I don't have to think about fiber optic cables, just like I don't have to think about paper cards. And I don't have to think about the capital cost, because now all I have to do is go to LinkedIn, right? And create a profile that people can see me and say, Thomas seems to know what he's talking about, or Fabio seems to know what he's talking about. and they've been reaching me and we have a question, I'm going to ask Fabio.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously, obviously. But there is also one point that I would like to share with you that is concerning the people that then are too enthusiast concerning the new technology. And they think they are so enthusiast because they, delegate to technology to do what they have to. So this is a point because even if I make emphasis on my method that use a lot of technology, they use AI, whatever, it doesn't mean that you don't have to train yourself, to coach yourself, to improve your abilities, because if you only.
use the technology to amplify bad performance, you will have worse performance. So this is a very important point. So I say, OK, we can make a training how to use the AI to improve your productivity and so on. But then, if you don't make any training to improve yourself, not the technology, You will also, you will only amplify bad things or worse things.
You know, you make such an incredibly important point and that is people think that AI is going to do sales. AI is never going to do sales because it takes the sales skills and our ability as human beings to communicate with other human beings to answer their questions in a way that relates to their needs empathetically and with emotional intelligence and in a way that impacts them that they can really leverage and trust, and build relationships with that drive sales, that's never going to change.
The way we're able to communicate and initially get in touch with them, that's already changed, right? We're not sending faxes. We're not knocking on doors the same way we used to, right? We're not sending out pamphlets by the thousands or the tens of thousands to post office boxes. We're now reaching people digitally. But you still have to know how to sell. and how to communicate with people. And I think that's where you're going. And if you don't approve upon that, then the rest of it's moot. Exactly, exactly.
And, but this is not only for the sales, because everything now I'm making a training concerning these issues of the AI for the business. And everything, you have to know what you want, if you want the AI helps you. Because you cannot think that the technology gives solution to your problem on its own. Also because if you ask for a solution, you don't know if it's all right or not.
You think that it's good. For instance, I always make the comparison with the photograph profession and, I tell to my customers that are thinking about to use the AI, look, we can, we are not photographers, we can ask to AI to do magnific, realistic pictures of, I don't know, a lion in the savannah.
That's great. And the photo that it gets out seems to be fantastic, so you say, okay, This is, this is, we don't need photographers anymore. But if a photograph use AI, he say, no, I bought the lion and three quarters with the sun on the backside, with the filter, I don't know, with the ISO, I don't know. And what he had is in mind will be in the photo.
Meanwhile, if I, I always give this. This image to explain, think about the photo, you think about the photo, and then look the photo that comes out. Are the same? No. Right. You like it, but it's not the same. And with the data, is the same. If I don't have the right datas, if I don't have the right organization, if I don't have the right algorithm that analyze the data, and I don't know what I want, I don't know how to interpret what comes out, the outcome or the process of the AI.
It could be good or not. So if you want that is good, you have to know that before. And you have to know what you want from the AI. And if what you want is good, it will be better. But if you want is bad, it will be worse. Right. So it's all about how we use it and knowing what we want to get out of it in the first place. Yeah. Right. And I think AI today is a big part of that. People are buying this and they're buying that and they're using all these different tools.
And they're not getting very good results. And then they walk away and they say, "Well, that didn't work. I guess we're back to the old ways." And the fact is they didn't use it in the right way in the first place because they didn't analyze what parts of their sales process or marketing process or customer engagement could be benefit by it and how to implement that in a manner that is consistent with their customers, their products, solutions, et cetera. And when you do that, then you bring in, the technology, not before.
And that's where the mistake is made. I think that's what you're alluding to. Yeah, yeah. No, and also, I mean, I always say that technology cannot solve problems that I'm not able to solve. Right. We only can solve quickly and better way in a better way, problems that I just solving, but helps me to solve faster or solve better, then with the powerful of calculation, I can do something that I didn't because it was impossible without the technology.
But ask the technology to make the job for me, it doesn't make any sense. Right. No, it won't work. Exactly, it doesn't work. And this is one of the calls that. AI project can fail, like CRM. How many CRM are installed and then anybody use? Because from the beginning, they thought that the technology was giving the possibility to do something that you didn't do.
If you don't do, you will not do anyway. Exactly. And it gets easier and easier, but we still need to get our teams. enlightened, trained, and engaged with the system so they can benefit by it. And I always tell people, you know, everything you learn is gonna put money in your pocket, and that's the way you need to think of it. And the more you realize that, the more you do, the more you do, we all benefit. And then you can help us even do better by doing that. Well, listen, Fabio, this has been, you know, an engaging, incredible conversation.
How can people reach you if they want to learn your sales process? and bring to bear the kind of technologies in your marketplace that are going to be impactful for their sales. Obviously, they can have all the contact in my web page, which is fabiodanze.com. There is also in that web, there is the possibility to download or to fill a questionnaire about your marketing situation or market selling situation.
So, we will give a report free of charge about the points that could be improved, a suggestion that the customer can solve on its own, or ask us through et cetera, and the web. Or obviously through LinkedIn, where I'm most active because my customers are all there. Yes. And we will put more information into the links from this event going forward and we're going to disseminate and put this event up in different areas so more people can see it and you can do likewise.
Fabio, I want to really thank you and I appreciate your time and your energy and your enthusiasm. And you know, I want to meet that 84 year old lady. I will present you, I will introduce you. And one of my aim is to get 84 like her, you know? Exactly. I don't know if it will be possible, but I will try. You will try, you're going to do just fine. You're going to do just fine. One question. I would like to do the same, I mean, to replay our conversation, but in Italian, you know?
So use the artificial intelligence. And see you speaking Italian. I would like to see you. That I would like to see, and we can do that. Exactly. Do that. So let's do that. And I will watch it with you, and I think that'll be humorous. But yes, we can do that. That's great. Well, thank you, Fabio. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Bye-bye. Bye-bye now.