Why Relationships Still Win in an AI-Driven Sales World with Carlo Girasoli

[00:00:00] Carlo: I set a agenda AI up at one of previous companies 12, 13 months ago, and it was fresh, it was innovative, it was something new that candidates hadn't seen before, clients weren't aware of, but I was able to take a team of 25 into a team of five that could spend better time talking to candidates and talking to clients.
[00:00:19] Mike: My name's Mike Lander, and you are listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast. Where we bring you actionable insights about sales, RFPs, negotiations, and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders, brand leaders, and procurement leaders, please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released.
Carlo, thanks ever so much for joining me. On Higgle, all the B2B sales group podcast. Great to have you as a guest.
[00:00:47] Carlo: Not a problem, Mike. Thank you for having me. I was blown away by the request.
[00:00:51] Mike: Ah, pleasure. And we met via LinkedIn and you know, people say, oh, you know, LinkedIn outreach doesn't work, blah, blah, blah.
It's, I'm like, that depends how you do it. You know, we chatted on LinkedIn and we kinda like commented on each other's posts and, and then it was a very natural, while you've got something to say, why don't you come on the podcast?
[00:01:08] Carlo: Yeah. It wasn't engineered that way either. It wasn't like I was going out and saying, I want to try and find Mike and have a chat with them.
But, you know, it's, it's the same thing throughout, whether it's a client relationship. Whether it's a candidate.
[00:01:21] Mike: Exactly.
[00:01:21] Carlo: It's that awareness piece. It's, it's just being there in the background building that. Credibility in that relationship over time, isn't it? It's that it's little bit,
[00:01:29] Mike: and that's what we're gonna talk about today on the show.
So without further ado, Carlo kind of who are you, what do you do, and what's your favorite song and why?
[00:01:38] Carlo: Okay. I'm Carlos Girasoli. It's a good Scottish name. Obviously. I'm a commercial leader. I've got 20 plus years in recruitment. Workforce solutions my sort of go-to if you like, I'm used to building and turning around.
Commercial operations that have either stalled or need a little bit of impetus. I've been doing that across the UK and you, I've won in priced for multimillion pound RFPs across multi-country as well. And more recently I've been on the other side of the procurement table when I was looking to source some AI tools as well.
We gave Mariel a really good insight actually into the whole world of, of an RFP from a different seat. This is probably the most difficult bit, the favorite song, ha. I don't think it's fair to give someone a few weeks lead up to, what's your favorite song? Because you can go down some rabbit holes, but, oh, you can, I've settled on one and it is, there should be some parental advisory if anyone's gonna unlistened to it's, um, cream Wang, clan Cream, CRE Air.
And there's a reason for it, obviously. So cream stands for cash rules, everything around me, nothing to do with sales, nothing to do with why I like it. I was probably about 11 years old going on a skiing trip, first time away, and I had some friends that had borrowed their brother's CD and they were playing this.
I hadn't had anything like it before and it just stuck in my head and it opened up a whole raft of raft and genre that I was listening to. It's been there like throughout, you know, I've always kinda held it again. And you keep coming back to it. I'm currently hearing it. I went to actually see Wang in Manchester no long ago, which
[00:03:12] Mike: Wow.
[00:03:13] Carlo: I didn't think ever get the chance to go and see them. They were still
[00:03:15] Mike: playing. Exactly.
[00:03:16] Carlo: Neither did I, but um, it was, it was great to go and see them. It was a great event. But I also, I play Fortnite with my kids.
[00:03:23] Mike: Oh yeah.
[00:03:24] Carlo: And I dunno if you heard the Fortnite, it's, yeah. As well you.
[00:03:27] Mike: Yep.
[00:03:28] Carlo: Right. So I play with my kids.
[00:03:30] Mike: Brilliant.
[00:03:30] Carlo: And my drop-in song when you jump off the bus Yep. The, the free Yeah. Is, is W Point Queen. And so my kids are singing along to it Now, obviously it's the radio edit.
[00:03:40] Mike: It's the radio version. Yeah,
[00:03:41] Carlo: absolutely. So they, they now ha are hearing the same song I heard at the age, which I, whether that'll take them in more sort of angles.
But, you know, I listen to all sorts of music, but that's the one that sort of stands out right now.
[00:03:52] Mike: That's a great story and it's a great thread and also about how that can take you into, it takes you into different genres, it takes you down different avenues and yeah, music is all about on the whole experiences and there's often common songs throughout our lives.
Brilliant. So Carlo, let's get into the questions. So first of all, your recent experience about relationship led business development versus called outreach. This is a really important topic. Literally this morning I had someone, and it's fine, someone contacted me. They wanted to go on the show, but they specialize in high volume LinkedIn outreach, cold, and I just said, look, that just doesn't fit with the show.
Because my experience and a lot of my guest experiences, the hit rate on that is really low. Even with AI assistance, people want to go back to senior, people want to go back on the client side to relationships and and having someone they can talk to that actually tunes in. So what's your experience?
[00:04:48] Carlo: Yeah, and you, I have dabbled with mass personalization as well, and you know when there's nothing
[00:04:54] Mike: wrong with that. That's a good thing, I think, to try things out. Experiment.
[00:04:57] Carlo: Yeah, and I think it works where you've got a product where it doesn't need the relationship. It is a very quick onetime buy and it's a done thing.
Probably more B2C than B2B though. And I think for me, I've seen better results throughout my career with a relationship led approach.
[00:05:14] Mike: So what happened on the mass customization at scale? And again, none of us are saying here, it's the devil's work. You shouldn't do it. But it has implications. So when you tried it out, what can happen?
Just out of interest,
[00:05:25] Carlo: very little return, if I'm honest. And for me. That's a real waste of your ICP because you've only got probably so many messages that you can get across before they say, please stop messaging me. Or is this that I'm getting?
[00:05:39] Mike: That's
[00:05:39] Carlo: right. And if you're bonding through valuable ICP, then the chances are you're not getting that client at some point.
So
[00:05:46] Mike: I think that's very well put.
[00:05:47] Carlo: And I think you've gotta put the time in. Well, before that meeting even stops, you've got to be thinking about, this is a client that's on my. Radar. I've got a buying persona. I know who I want to target, but actually I can't just reach out and say, hi, John, do you want to buy X?
Okay. So I probably gotta start that a little bit earlier. And you know, I've got a good example of, this was a recent client that I'd noticed. I've been following the company for a while and I noticed they got a new chief people officer, new CP. And very simply just connected. Sent a message.
Congratulations. Hope it all goes well. I've been following the company for X years. Good luck. Nothing else. Just a simple connection. Request without any connected, and that was fine. There was no ask. There was no sell, and it was one of those that didn't take very long to build up a relationship. He'd put a post out.
I'd like it. Comment, comment and then I do the same. And that was pretty simple to start with. So I then noticed that actually he was going to the same event that I was gonna be at as well. And there was a simple follow up message. Good to see that you'll be there. So will I. Here's my phone number.
WhatsApp me if you've got time to grab a coffee.
[00:06:45] Mike: Yeah. Perfect.
[00:06:46] Carlo: We did, you know, you messaged and said, you know what, it'd be great. So we did that, got a message and I met up and I, I had a rock sack with me and carry on my laptop stuff. You know, usual, you're out for a few days and you got this bag. And he noticed I had a High Rocks badge on.
And we literally sat and talked about High Rocks. Most of the meeting, I think we had about five minutes of business chat. You know, that was about,
[00:07:08] Mike: so what's High Rocks Carlos? So the listeners know what is High Rocks?
[00:07:11] Carlo: High Rocks is uh, sort of fitness. It's where gym goals go to test themselves. You know, everyone's got a tracking field thing.
If you go to the gym, you don't really have an outfit, you just go to the gym. So this is now something where really go to the gym, can go to events all over the globe, compete. There's eight stations. There's a kilometer run between eight stations, so you're on eight K and you push sleds, lift weights, do ski eggs.
And he noticed that I had this badge on my bag and said, well, yeah, I've, I've done one. I'm signed up to go to another. He said, how did you go with that? So I told him what I did and he's like, oh, I'm on my third. And before you know it, we were just chatting about high rocks, nothing to do with why we actually got it together.
[00:07:50] Mike: So hence Carlo, I talk about vinyl or music. It's a common thing to chat about. Yeah, same thing.
[00:07:57] Carlo: And I think that is the common thread. It doesn't matter. Subject is, it's about finding a common ground. I think that you can have a conversation with someone and build a relationship and it's not manufactured.
It's, you've gotta have a genuine interest in what that topic is and what that person's doing. Even if you dunno about it. Be genuine interest in Be curious, ask questions about it to understand it more. And you build a relationship naturally. It's not rocket science, it's just human connection.
[00:08:24] Mike: Exactly.
Precisely. And I think you know that point about the, I was put talking to someone else, literally three or four weeks ago, did the same thing. They connect to someone, they were having a chat. They said, oh, you're going to the event. I'll be there as well. There's often when you go to these exhibitions, there's dead time and they said, let's meet for coffee.
And they said, yeah, okay, fine.
[00:08:42] Carlo: It's as simple as that sometimes, isn't it? It's, and sometimes you make a few follow up because you're not got a response. You know when to follow up, when not to, and I think a lot of it comes down to reading the signals correctly and understanding of what you're seeing and them making a decision on it.
Now, when I went to this meeting, I did my research again on the company, on the individual, on the hiring trends. I built within Claude, I built a prospect client report where I took all this information, put it all into one place to go, tell me more about this. Lemme where the gaps are. Tell me where I can ask questions.
That the standard, you know, how many hires are you needing this year and how many recruitment organizations are you working with? It was more about what can I find out that nobody else is gonna be asking? I'm not pitching anything. I just genuinely want to open more conversations and understand the business better.
And that conversation led to future phone calls, another face-to-face. And the face-to-face was actually abroad. It was in Malta, um, where they were based. Most of my clients were raised in the airports At the time. I was actually on holiday and I said, oh, I'm going to be here. I'm flying out this date with my wife.
My wife actually got on the bus and went to the hotel as I crossed the car park and went to a meeting. So again, it's about going the extra mile. Being human and connecting, I think is the key here. So instead of pitching to this individual, I was being curious. I was asking questions, and when I went into the the meeting, the second face-to-face said, look, we've looked at everything you've sent.
We've had conversations, and I'm putting your company forward as proposed for the XRFB, which was great. I mean, obviously. The work still had to be done. I still had to talk to procurement. I still had to do the, the whole commercial element of it, but what it meant was I had a C-suite recommendation already before I'd even come to the table as part of that tender versus a cold outreach, who, and when they put the RFP out, they'll be coming in cold with, this is what we are presenting to you.
Where I was tailoring my response more to, I've heard what you've told me. I understand what your problems are, your pain points are, and here's my response and probably actually help tailor the RFP because I'd ask questions that opened their eyes to, oh, we've, we've not thought of that, so let's maybe put that in the RFP as well.
I think it gives you a different angle to approach an RFP or a client.
[00:10:53] Mike: Definitely. So let's just go off piece a little bit for a second. So I dunno what will happen now, but we'll find out. Carlo. Uh, so you've worked in the recruitment industry for a long time. You've worked in temp and in perm, and I remember walking round.
A very big recruitment floor one day. That was in the west end of London. This is going back a few years and there were like literally hundreds of recruiters on desks. This was a big operation and they had hunters and they had gatherers, people that had existing relationships, but people were going out doing net new for people that are doing net new relationship building and recruit.
Which can be pretty soul destroying. The danger is you say, oh, it's just a volume-based game. Hit the phones and see what happens. What's your kind of broad insights advice now for p for people in recruitment that are trying to get new net new logos and they can just hit the phones? Response rates are very low these days.
I mean, less than 1%, probably a lot less than 1%. What do you think is a better way of building pipeline?
[00:11:48] Carlo: That's a good question. Uh, you know, I think it's, it's similar to almost. Any sales technique that you would look to follow, you've got to identify, you know, who's my target? What is my ICB? And within that, am I looking at a specific sector?
Because if you're going broad and saying, look, I want to target manufacturing businesses where, you know, in what sector doing what. So you go from this broad approach to narrowing it down and then, okay, well I've now got my sector. Who is it I want to speak to specifically within that manufacturing organization?
And that's looking at your buyer personas and saying, is this pain point gonna be sitting with hr? Is it gonna be sitting with a managing director? Is it gonna be sitting with ops? And again, narrowing it down to this is who I want to be connecting to. Then I would suggest going, well, even there's tools everywhere now isn't there with with LinkedIn and all the outreach tools that can help you identify who those people are.
That's where I would then start doing the soft approach. First of all, connecting, getting awareness, build that recognition of you as an individual on their. As soon as they then get that oh car asked to pick a call up, they're aware that they understand who Carlo is, what he does, what business he's working in.
And actually he's commented a couple of my posts, so I'm familiar with who this individual is rather than, hi, I'm Carlo from X Recruitment company. I want to do this with you. I'm fine, thank you. I've got something. Um, whereas if they've already got this narrowed, streamlined view of this is who the person is, you can then open that door much more easily, I think, rather than banging the phone and, and wasting your time on multiple calls across a big white spectrum of potential buyers
[00:13:20] Mike: completely with you.
And that whole point about when you find who they are, go on LinkedIn, follow them, they make a post, then comment on it, but make sure your comment's meaningful and bring something new. Bring a different insight. Keep doing that. Good things will happen.
[00:13:33] Carlo: A hundred percent.
[00:13:33] Mike: Yeah, because they just do. I had an author, really, really clever guy that I'd read his book and I wanted to get him on the show.
I was following him on LinkedIn, you know, genuinely very interested in what he said. I think he's a real thought leader in his space over six months. Eventually. Then I said, look, it'd be great if you could come on the show, blah, blah, blah. He's like, yeah, sure. Not a problem. But it had taken six months of building the relationship.
It didn't matter to me whether he came on the show or not. In many ways, it was about building a relationship with a very, very esteemed author that knew exactly what he was talking about and had a different point of view. Same
[00:14:04] Carlo: thing. I think that's the thing that the organizations probably don't reflect on enough, is the time it takes to build that.
Relationship. You know, you want a quick return. Now, if you're going out and you're bringing in an experienced recruiter with an X industry, then yes, you expect ground hitting straight away. You know, it's like, let's go, let's fly. But if you're bringing someone fresh in that has no sector experience.
They've gotta build that up. And I think there's a time window that has to be given for that.
[00:14:29] Mike: There is. So, um, let's move on to how do you turn a potential nightmare with procurement into a success story?
[00:14:35] Carlo: I think there's been a few, um, you know, 20 years in recruitment. You do come across quite a few, but the one that starts stuck.
In my mind is I'd inherited a client, and as I said earlier, I attended to inherit clients that were needing to be turned around or an organization or a company that needed to hit new targets. Um, in this scenario, there was already an ongoing debate with the client and that I inherited, and so came in and the first email I got was 800,000 pounds.
Whoa. This is. I was like, okay, can anyone explain why we owe the client 800,000? So long story short, there was a clause in the contract that said, if you don't supply the numbers we asked for, we'll go to an external agency and you will pay the, what was it, the clause? It was very, it was, was a staggeringly, poorly worthy clause.
Yeah. Um, basically it was, you'll. You pay the
[00:15:24] Mike: sourcing fee,
[00:15:25] Carlo: the full cost. So that included contractor salaries and you know, the fee on top of that rather than the difference between our cost and their cost.
[00:15:34] Mike: Yeah.
[00:15:34] Carlo: So that would be the logical piece. Well, we've had to go external. You cost does X, they cost us y.
That's the difference. It wasn't that it was the full cost and that was a one of the contract. So,
[00:15:43] Mike: and someone signed that. Someone
[00:15:45] Carlo: Oh, absolutely.
[00:15:46] Mike: Wow.
[00:15:47] Carlo: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:48] Mike: Always read contracts. Everyone, everyone listening that's in sales, always read the contract. Read the small print, you know, stick it into a secure Claude Chat, d pt, whatever you use, make sure you understand it.
'cause these things are very, make you exposed,
[00:16:03] Carlo: not Yeah. Make
[00:16:04] Mike: your legal to
[00:16:06] Carlo: yeah,
[00:16:06] Mike: talk to your lawyers for God's sake.
[00:16:08] Carlo: As you come back to legal and say, oh, we've send this agreement, and they, then it's too late though. And when they spot these clause still,
[00:16:14] Mike: wow.
[00:16:15] Carlo: I, I, I spotted it and I was like, right, okay, that's not a good starting point.
So they held off paying invoices as well.
[00:16:21] Mike: So Carlo, people ask me, what do you mean by commercial acumen? I think that demonstrates precisely what I mean by commercial acumen.
[00:16:29] Carlo: Absolutely. Yeah. And it comes in different forms, doesn't it? But it does understand what did those words mean and how will that potentially impact my body?
What's
[00:16:38] Mike: implication? On the second or third bounce of the ball, what might happen to us.
[00:16:43] Carlo: Absolutely, a hundred percent.
[00:16:44] Mike: And if you don't understand that, don't sign it.
[00:16:47] Carlo: I was fortunate enough that I've received this via email, right? So I didn't have to respond immediately. So my first thoughts were, let's look at this contract.
So way through the contract, and fortunately for me, there was another. Staggeringly poorly war clause that said that they had to send us an email confirmation of the order one length in advance of the requirement being needed,
[00:17:09] Mike: right?
[00:17:09] Carlo: They had never done this, ever right in the history of the contract. So I don't know why someone thought that was good to put in because it's not a practice that the client would follow.
[00:17:18] Mike: Well, it's not practical. You can't do that.
[00:17:19] Carlo: No. You don't have a Monzo. No, you don't. And so we never received that email. So I was able to come back and say, look, actually the order was never rubber stamp because you didn't follow this process. Therefore that doesn't matter about this side and yada yada, so
[00:17:33] Mike: therefore the liability doesn't fold you.
Exactly.
[00:17:35] Carlo: Yeah. So we'd hide back and forth and we, you know, held a line to say this one clause. Negates that one out. So because you didn't do that, the rest, this doesn't matter. We had the back and forth. They ultimately agreed, they paid the outstanding invoices and the, it was an external procurement lead.
They had been brought in just to try and secure this as a fractional role. And so that person moved on another task that he had to do. And then, you know, part of what we were doing was looking at why did we not supply, you know, what was the problem? Why was there a shortfall? So there's all this data that the accounts have got.
A lot of it was on spreadsheets as well, you know, individual spreadsheets, email addresses and emails here. So I then went back to the head of procurement and said, look, there's some bit of deep digging here. And actually there's a fundamental underlying issue as to why we weren't able to supply. And it was, you know, when we'd started the contract, they were probably sitting number two from a pay rate perspective, COVID hit engineers, et cetera, in the industry.
All left. It was tricky to get 'em back in and their pay rates hadn't shifted in five years, and so when you look at where you're setting it second, by the time it comes to five years, it must have an eighth in just our client to say, we can see from the data that you've lost Brown to the competition.
[00:18:43] Mike: And this is sitting eighth in the stack of what they pay their people.
[00:18:46] Carlo: Yeah, exactly right. And so when you've got a a niche industry and a talent scarcity, sometimes unfortunately it is about the pay rate. And if you're sitting at the bottom of the pile, they're going to go elsewhere. There's other options for them. So I was able to take all that data, go back to the client with us.
I think we need to pivot. You need to review your pay rates first all, but also what else can we put to package together to make it more attractive? Your shifts are a different layout than a lot of the competition. The environment you're working in is a sunnier environment that a lot of people will get to work in.
You know, if you're out fixing parts and bits, you're in the rain. It's not great. If you've got some sunny climbs to go on and you can have at your weekend, you can go onto the beach and relax. Know it's about. Telling a different story to the candidate. So we did that. Yeah, the following season hit the ground running.
We got what we were looking for. They gave us the targets and we hit them. It's for me, there's no point winning a negotiation and losing a client.
[00:19:40] Mike: No.
[00:19:40] Carlo: You know, it's about, that was, uh, numbers. We had the conversation. It's part nothing major. There's no need to upset anywhere or lose the relationships.
Let's move into how we fix it. What is the outcome we're looking for as a partnership? And I'm still in touch with them years later.
[00:19:55] Mike: Brilliant. And I think also a good illustration of it isn't personal, it is about business. It's about what's the issue? What's the underlying root causes? Can we fix this and can we move forward with a commercial relationship?
And you've demonstrated there that yes, you can, but if you'd have taken it very personally. Then all hell are broken loose. Absolutely. And that's the
[00:20:14] Carlo: difference. Absolutely. And you burn and you burn the bridges and there's no
[00:20:16] Mike: way coming
[00:20:17] Carlo: back from that
[00:20:17] Mike: bridges. And people talk to people and therefore you don't just burn one bridge, you burn a series of bridges.
And that's the danger.
[00:20:24] Carlo: And the industry I was working at the time was very close knit. Everyone knows everyone. And so therefore, it was much more important to make sure that this is me standing my ground. But this is the why. It's not personal, it's factual. It's based on the contract. Let's part that now and move on.
Let's see how we can progress.
[00:20:41] Mike: Exactly. And like industries, like for example, oil and gas, you have very tight-knit community. Everyone knows each other, they move around. So yeah, you have to be careful. I mean, I believe you, you don't burn bridges wherever you can. It's very, very, very rare that you know.
That's the ultimate conclusion.
[00:20:57] Carlo: Take the time to do your research. Take the time to look at the data, take the time to understand what is the bigger issue, you know, what is the problem, and go into the meeting with. An idea of what you want to get outta it.
[00:21:08] Mike: Exactly, yeah. And there's no excuse these days, you know, I mean, I think the danger now is that everyone just gives everything to AI and says, what's the answer?
That's not smart. So you've gotta have, you know, your strategic thinking head on and then work out what the right questions are to ask and then work out what data you've got and see. Where that takes you, which takes us onto, so how will AI change the nature of the recruitment industry for both clients and providers?
Because yeah, this could be very wide ranging. Where do you think it's gonna go?
[00:21:40] Carlo: So I. I'll narrow it down then, um, rather than keeping it white. So I, I think there are probably two eras, if you like, of where AI is and is going to be, uh, from a hygiene factor, I think, or, or call it table stakes. Then agent AI handling repeatable work, you know, the admin, the time consuming work that slows the recruitment process down the data gathering.
That should pretty much, I think, be either standard practice currently. Or at least be being rolled out or is in your pipeline to, or your roadmap to get there. Because if we're looking at this as innovation currently, then I think you're already behind because there's so much happening already and AI is moving so fast.
I set AI up. It's my, my previous companies. 12 to 13 months ago and it was fresh, it was innovative. It was something new that, you know, candidates hadn't seen before, clients weren't aware of, but I was able to take a team of 25 into a team of five that could spend better time talking to candidates and talking to clients.
And that was the point of it. It was bring AI into do the knockout, you know, the prescreens interview, scheduling, you know, you've clarified. Does this person match the job description? Yes. Let's book an interview. You know, my teams were coming in the next day to scheduled interviews with candidates that met the criteria for the job they were trying to fill based on AI doing some quick screen.
It would also then take the minutes in the notes. You know, we've all seen note takers now that will follow and recall, but then it would also update the CRM. So there wasn't the lag of come off the call, I've got my scribbled notes. I need to then update my CRM if I don't, whatever's in my head's going to get exactly wattled down over time.
But you can take all that away by using the tools to do that. So for me, the reason I was bringing AI in was. So I can spend, and my team can spend better quality time with candidates using their experience. Yeah. To dig deep and ask the questions. And with
[00:23:29] Mike: clients, yeah,
[00:23:30] Carlo: but also clients. Exactly. And it's about spending your time wisely, rather, you know, everything from the company I saw was struggling with the amount of admin and paperwork.
Regardless what it's been, it's always been the same, hasn't it? Volumes and volumes of paperwork, volumes of updating, and then it just changed to a digital version of it, um, and, and got quicker. So for me, that was the first stage. It was bring AI in to take away the admin, the time setting tasks.
[00:23:54] Mike: And it may well be that those 20 people, that it went from 25 down to five, those 20 people, doesn't mean they lose their jobs necessarily.
They get redeployed. They get retrained. They get to do more interesting work rather than the admin work. And that, I think, often is, again, missed within the whole AI conversation.
[00:24:11] Carlo: I totally agree, and I think that's where the AI shift, where I see it moving to. I mean, everyone is now playing with chat GPT and Claude Perplexity and asking questions.
I see almost a second era of ai. I think that's gonna come in, not just for recruitment companies, but I think it'll, it'll happen naturally across other organizations as well. I think the organizations that are going to be the winners of the at the forefront will be those that aren't using AI just to save time and reduce headcount.
Or reallocate headcount. It'll be those that use AI to interrogate the data that it produces. Because with all this technology we've got, there is an abundance of data, and we've probably had most of this data for years, but we haven't had the capacity to interrogate it, interpret it at pace. If you've got all this across spreadsheets and the old skill approach, you used to have to sit down and spend, I was trying to figure out.
The gap is, or where the issue is, where the challenge is. You can upload that now into ai and, and this is where I think, you know, LLMs, were probably built into an organization at some point, but for me to use that as a strategic partner, helping you interrogate the data to understand what the next step should be now.
Not saying that AI is making the decisions that AI shouldn't be making the decisions. It is there as a bit of a lens to say, this is the pattern. This is what's standing out to me as an individual. I've heard you say it before, human loop is critical and it is. That is critical because the AI can identify these patterns, but deciding what to do with it means and what it means.
That takes experience, that takes knowledge, and this is where that. That shouldn't be automated.
[00:25:44] Mike: Exactly.
[00:25:45] Carlo: That experience piece should always be, I'm gonna make a call based on some of the data. I see.
[00:25:49] Mike: Yeah.
[00:25:49] Carlo: But you're getting that input from AI quickly and more expediently. Because if I can see that well in advance of going into a client meeting, for example, you know, I don't need to spend two weeks looking at data.
I can spend a morning.
[00:26:00] Mike: Especially where it's natural language based data where you've got free text, which used to be a absolute nightmare where you've got hundreds of rows of, yeah, numerical data, but lots of text data to go with it. You are like, wow. What are the themes here? That's a good use of AI is to extract what the common themes are and where the insights are.
I think also, uh, Carlo again, so people are listening aren't going, oh, well, you know, I mean, what about regulation? Yeah. Under the EU AI Act, it's, I think recruitment comes under the aspect of it's a regulated environment. It's a risky environment. Therefore, you've got to have audit trails. You've got to have very strong governance.
And again, people don't talk about AI governance 'cause it's not very exciting, but it's the critical bit. If you can't audit. What decisions you've made and how you made them. Well, you've got a problem. And rightly within recruitment, you've got a problem. That doesn't mean you don't use ai. That means you use it responsibly and you design it appropriately
[00:26:56] Carlo: and it can probably help you have a better, clearer auditing process now.
Yeah, exactly.
[00:27:01] Mike: Absolutely.
[00:27:01] Carlo: But you've got to make sure the tools that you are. Investing in give you that credibility and peace of mind because they are covering that compliance piece or they do follow data protection in, in the right manner. So there homework to be done before you just say, yes, we're gonna bring in ai.
But um, I think it can definitely help with that elevation of that, that next step. And I think one of the reasons that human has to be part of that discussion and that decision making is accountability. You cannot just, I don't know, outsource it to AI and just go make decisions for me, you know, run my business.
I think that's the real, real risk that some people might start doing that, but I mean, anyone that's led teams or ran a business at some point in their life has read Patrick Lencioni's, five Dysfunctions of a Team, and the dysfunctions of a team are pretty clearly, you know, a dysfunction of an organization at any point.
You know, the top of that pyramid is results, but sitting just under it was accountability. And if you don't have that accountability, you might still get to the results using ai, but if it goes wrong, you can't just point a finger at AI and say
[00:28:03] Mike: Exactly,
[00:28:04] Carlo: you made a mistake. You need a human that is able to have a judgment based outcome.
[00:28:09] Mike: I think also, Carlos, something that I see a lot of people doing is they're using AI to make the existing workflow more efficien. I think that's just a complete mistake. I think you have to reimagine what the outcome is you're aiming for, how to improve that from a baseline and then think through, well what would the workflow look like in an AI first world?
And I think then if it's AI first with human in the loop and human checking, so it's not running riot, then I think you can make some real breakthroughs. But I think if you just make the existing process more efficient, there's a very small, incremental benefit of doing that.
[00:28:42] Carlo: Yeah. And you know, I've seen some companies recently where AI companies where for recruitment purpose, they have got all literally sewn up as a recruiter.
They can go from job description to sourcing a candidate across multiple platforms, the outreach, the pre-screen, the interview, and it's a scary place to be because it's like, well, who's making the judgment call on this individual's experience? And for me, that's, I think where that, the human moat is because from a client's perspective, you know, they've got data as well.
And this is where I think we are missing a trick right now. It's about, you know, if I'm sitting in the client's seat, uh, recruitment companies coming to me, you may look all similar and you may have the same tools, and therefore if you're using ai, I'm asking why am I paying the price I'm paying?
Precisely. This is where the experience piece comes in. Actually. You're not buying a 20 minute conversation with a candidate, you're buying. 15, 20 years of understanding this candidate's the right fit for you. And this is what I'm able to do better because of what I'm I'm used to doing.
[00:29:39] Mike: And if they genuinely have the experience.
I mean, I've heard some horror stories recently through my networks of candidates, and this is a minority, not majority, minority of candidates who don't have the experience they profess to have. Like what's on the cv? Doesn't actually represent the work they've actually done and the experience they've got.
Well, a human's got to work that out in an appropriate way and ask questions and dig for evidence. And that's a skill.
[00:30:03] Carlo: And that's because a cv, you know Claude charge GBT, you take the job description, you take your existing cv and you just tell it to make my CV match what it needs to look like. And you know, certain ones of them will exaggerate and go.
Too far
[00:30:17] Mike: and not all, as we said, not everyone, but you have to be able to work out where those exceptions are.
[00:30:22] Carlo: Yeah, and I think, you know, when it comes to clients, they are setting on this abundance of data that recruitment companies are also sitting on. They've got the same tools, they've got AI and it can tell them how to scrutinize a supplier, you know, and could squeeze on slightly more.
And I think this is where a supplier can use the client's own data that allows 'em to act more of as an advisor and offer a value add. That comes in from a com, you know, that's where the commercial value would sit and lie. You know, a provider that is interpreting the client's data that they can't get on their own because they don't see the volume of candidates that are coming through the knockouts.
The rationale is using that data to help advise a client. Like the similar, if I go back to that procurement experience I had where I had 800 K, but actually the underlying challenge was. Periods when the wrong scenario and you know, there was things that were moving. It's using data that they're not aware of because they can't see the wider picture to help them move faster and move along like the track a bit.
[00:31:16] Mike: Definitely. Carlo, it's been amazing. Thank you ever so much for coming on the show. Can you just in summary, kinda like, you know, what are your kind of two or three takeaways? If you were driving to work and you're at the end of the show, what would be the two or three things that you'd want to hear about that you thought, oh, I might try that or think about.
[00:31:33] Carlo: For me, I've posted about it lots and lots as well. I keep talking about it. You know, clarity is, is a key factor here. You've gotta understand what you're walking into, whether that's that client meeting, a one-to-one, or a or a r fp. In order to be able to get that clarity, you need to spend the time thinking.
You've got to allocate and carve out and clear thinking time. We don't get that enough, I think, across modern working lives. You look at calendars, the meeting backed up into another meeting, backed into another meeting. We've got carve out that time to go and think and I think as well, probably the other key takeaway would be close the loop on every deal.
You know, may you win or lose it. You've got to understand Y. And if you aren't looking at the Y, you will probably have take the same approach to your next client if you understand actually that didn't work because of X, you can then may decide to do Y and Z. Or do we do X again? You know, it's about that decision making.
[00:32:22] Mike: It is, and simple feedback loop, let's not make it complicated. Just ask for the feedback. You're not saying let's reopen the sale. Just ask for the feedback.
[00:32:31] Carlo: Totally
[00:32:31] Mike: Brilliant. Carlo, it's been amazing. Where can people find out more about you?
[00:32:34] Carlo: LinkedIn. I think I'm probably the only college. You solely on LinkedIn.
So I'm actually gonna do a sales after this just to make sure. Uh, exactly. But yeah, it's College u solely. The spelling will hopefully be on the podcast, so yeah. Yeah. Perfect.
[00:32:47] Mike: Carlo, thanks ever so much for joining me. It's been a real pleasure.
[00:32:49] Carlo: Thank you.
[00:32:51] Mike: Thanks for listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast series with your host Mike Lander.
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