#102 - Lucas Pedretti, CEO of Qymatix - How sales can become 10x more productive by using technology in a different way

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to make B2B sales 10 times more effective. My guest is Lucas Pedretti, Co-founder and CEO of Qymatix

Lucas is a self-proclaimed innovator with an MBA and 20 years’ experience in international management, business administration, and marketing of technological products. He’s worked for companies like Festo, Belden Inc. and Omron Electronics. Besides being passionate about sales, he’s an avid traveler and a Social Media aficionado.

He strongly believes that “In the near future, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be the decisive factor in medium-sized companies to remain competitive.”

And that put him on a mission to make a dent in the world – and specifically the world of B2B sales by augmenting sales leaders around the world to sell more, faster

And this triggered me, hence I invited Lucas to my Podcast. We explore the sizeable problem many B2B sales leaders are struggling with and how this can be resolved with technology in ways that provide exponential results. We discuss the role of AI to augment people, and not to automate them out of a job. Last but not least, we discuss Lucas’s take on what traits are essential to create a remarkable software business.

Here are some of his quotes:

The vision is that B2B sales is still done by people, by humans. It is still done very ineffectively, and it can be 10 to 20 times more effective if they use new technologies.

I identified the problem 20 years ago, and the problem is still there. But now that technology has advanced, it has moved. My vision is to bring this technology to the people that are struggling in sales.

Most of the critical sales negotiations are value-driven. You still need people to communicate with each other to understand the need and the problem of each other.

They're very, very ineffective. They are mainly intuition-driven, or they run from one urgency into the next one. They cannot really focus on what brings most for their company.

And as you say, it's a one-to-one plus three. So it's humans working with technology. The technology alone, it's only half of the solution.

During this interview, you will learn three things:

1. That we should not underestimate how long it takes to create a business out of a good idea. That you need grid – grid to stay there for a long time to build something of value.
2. That it is critical to develop courage to quickly pull through on the things that are right for the business even if this means saying goodbye to ideas, people or key investments that at one point in time seemed the right thing.
3. Why you shouldn’t fall in love with the product or the vision – fall in love with the problem – a problem you’re passionate about solving.