Sales is changing fast. What once relied heavily on cold calls and manual follow-ups is now being reshaped by artificial intelligence. In this exciting episode of the Grow your B2B SaaS Podcast, Joran Hofman sits down with Frank Sondors CEO at Forge, who is a leading expert in sales and AI integration, to uncover how companies can use AI to build smarter, faster go-to-market strategies. Frank shares how he built his own company to $3 million in revenue in just one year by combining AI with smart sales processes. He talks about new roles like the GTM engineer, how AI agents can support sales teams, and why blending human effort with AI is the key to long-term success. Whether you're a startup founder or leading an enterprise team, this episode is packed with practical advice to help you sell better in today’s fast-moving market.
(0:51) - Guest intro: Frank Sondors and his ecosystem of tools
(1:36) - Building an ecosystem similar to Apple and Frank's sales journey
(2:34) - Profit margins and the role of AI in business scaling
(3:43) - Rapid growth and scaling with minimal headcount
(4:41) - Old vs new go-to-market strategy leveraging AI
(5:41) - The role of GTM engineers in sales and pipeline generation
(6:45) - Sales development engineers and their responsibilities
(7:40) - Increase in tech usage in sales and admin work reduction
(8:32) - How AI can craft personalized emails
(9:23) - Assembling custom workflows using tools like Zapier
(10:15) - Voice AI agents for customer follow-up
(11:06) - The value of human interaction in sales
(11:55) - Decision making: AI agent vs human interaction
(12:56) - Testing AI agents after hours and A/B testing strategies
(13:57) - The misconception of automating all sales processes with AI
(14:56) - Evolution and effectiveness of AI in business
(16:10) - The resistance and acceptance of AI in the market
(17:11) - The necessity of being profitable without VC funding
(18:05) - Resistance to AI and the inevitability of change
(19:39) - Implementing agents at scale and the role of NA10 people
(20:32) - Encouraging team-wide automation and innovation
(21:28) - Using WhatsApp as a channel for customer communication
(22:28) - The importance of first impressions and human interactions
(23:28) - The role of WhatsApp in increasing response rates
(24:40) - Integrating WhatsApp with Slack for seamless communication
(25:42) - Being available across multiple channels for customer engagement
(26:08) - Feeding the right context to AI agents for effective interaction
(27:10) - Starting with ChatGPT for AI integration
(28:03) - Treating ChatGPT as a business coach
(29:02) - Encouraging team use of ChatGPT for problem-solving
(30:02) - Optimizing repetitive tasks with AI
(31:09) - Personal pain points and the role of AI in alleviating them
(32:05) - The focus on building a great product and selling it
(32:38) - Testing AI agents vs humans and employee concerns
(33:10) - The future of labor distribution and AI
(34:09) - The role of humans in supervising AI agents
(35:08) - The evolution of sales roles and the end of email templates
(36:20) - AI agents communicating with each other in business
(37:30) - The importance of context in AI interactions
(37:45) - Advice for SaaS startups from 0 to 10K MRR
(38:49) - Speaking to customers aggressively and leveraging networks
(39:44) - Building in public and social selling strategies
(40:33) - Doing things that don't scale and leveraging communities
(41:31) - The importance of hiring the right team from 10K to 10M ARR
(42:22) - The challenge of hiring and firing for growth
(43:14) - The value of hiring autonomous employees
(44:06) - The problem of babysitting employees and hiring practices
(45:06) - Compounding business strategies for growth
(46:55) - Ensuring cofounders have the right competence
(48:47) - The importance of pricing based on consumption
(49:49) - De-risking for growth and the role of sparring partners
