The Agentic Revolution: AI In Professional Sales With David Fauser & Mike Sparling

David Fauser (0:01)

I want to identify those key points that Mike was talking about, those key points within the selling process that I think I know, but I may not know, and then really make sure that we build out all those key points to really understand that, so we're positioned well moving forward.

Mark Cox (0:17)

Tim, you're in for a great show today because today we've got both David Fauser and Mike Sparling joining the show. And these are a couple of our favorites in the funnel. Those of you know Mike because Mike's been our AI Sherpa for the last number of Selling Well podcasts. And David Fauser runs a massive sales organization for CIMCO Refrigeration, 150 some odd people, and he's been a friend of the show. So if you look into some of the past episodes we've interviewed David, David's been a guest host, helping me interview some of our great guests. And with these two real thought leaders today, we have great open conversation just about AI.

And at a high level, really cover off four topics today. Really, what's going on with AI and professional sales? And somebody running a sales organization north of 125 people, they've got a good line of sight in terms of how we're leveraging AI for productivity and efficiency and a lot of those things. We talk a little bit about where AI is going, what we're gonna need to enable our teams within the future. Mike is super helpful for that conversation. We're talking about AI also, the implications on salespeople. So what are we all dealing with, trying to stay current with these technologies? And then there's that implication or opportunity for sales leadership.

And as any opportunity you get to chat with people like this is a real pleasure for me for sure and a great learning opportunity for me. I hope it's the same for you. And if you like today's podcast with David Fauser and Mike Sparling, please like and subscribe to The Selling Well podcast and tell your friends. Because the more folks who do that, that's how we actually get great guests like Mike and David. So team, I really enjoy chatting with these guys. I hope you enjoy today's conversation too.

Team, welcome to another great episode of Selling Well podcast and David Fauser, Mike Sparling, welcome to the show again.

David Fauser (2:24)

Thank you, Mark. Glad to be back.

Mark Cox (2:26)

Great to be here. I was pretty excited for today, guys. So we've got two of our favorites here. As you know, Mike's been helping us really as our AI Sherpa over the last number of weeks, interviewing a bunch of different people.

We've had David Fauser as a friend of the show for a few years now, and at one point in time, David did a couple of co-hosting gigs and really the show viewership always increased when David was doing that. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe that's a reflection on me. It's great to have you both back and maybe we'll get the short story intro from both of you, if you wouldn't mind, starting with you, David Fauser.

David Fauser (3:06)

Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you, Mark. And I'm super happy to be back again today. And this is a great topic, by the way, very front of mind. So yeah, my name is David Fauser. I'm the Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Strategy for CIMCO. CIMCO, if you would have read or learned to love selling, you'd learn about our value book, where we built half of the world's hockey rinks. And we do engineering and design and manufacturing and install and servicing of complex, customized refrigeration and thermal systems for all sorts of different industries.

We're located across North America. We're North America's largest refrigeration organization, what we do. And we have about 130 salespeople who sell projects and service as well too. So AI is something that's really, really interesting to us. So I look forward to sharing a few things of what we're thinking with your listeners.

Mark Cox (4:02)

Amazing. Team Hay, huge sales organization.

And then huge opportunity for David when we think of the sales organization Player Coaches, they service, and they're supposed to grow the business of tricky business for sure. Thanks, David. It's great to have you here today. Michael Sparling.

Mike Sparling (4:20)

Hello, Mark. Hello, David.

Well, I could claim that one of the things I'm trying to do is sit in every one of those hockey arenas and see a game that David built. But I'm currently the Chief Operating Officer, Chief Technology Officer for a neurosciences company, global reach, and lots of things there. But really, my claim to fame is I've spent 30 years, a little more in my career, always working in AI. Usually not called that. It's only in the last few years has been fashionable to say you work in AI. But I've been through industrial process control. I've been through search. I've been through customer evaluation. I've been through behavior change, good stint in academia, and now working on the intersection between our organic minds and the digital mind and what we can do with that and just having a great time co-hosting with Mark here on The Selling Well for this time.