Ep.19 Artificial Intelligence In Sales

A poor upbringing from one of the roughest areas of Chicago didn’t stop Victor from earning a B.S. Electrical Engineering, an MBA and building a 20 year career as a top sales executive and becoming President of Global Sales and Marketing for a $420M company.     

As Vice President of International Sales in a Fortune 500 $3B corporation at the time, he was selected from over 500 sales managers to join the President’s Advisory Council for excellence in sales and management.

He has shared the stage with top business speakers: Zig Ziglar, Daymond John (Shark Tank),  Rudy Giuliani, Paul Otellini (CEO of Intel), and John May (CEO of FedEx Kinkos) and now he shares his thoughts with the SalesChange podcast.

The interview with Victor came about as pure chance thanks to a connection on Instagram and a random message to ask if he’d be interested – obviously he was and now he’s here to share how he’s coped and managed to ‘pivot’ (I hate that word) his speaking business to create a new online format. This episode of The SalesChange Podcast covers –

• Content Creation on Instagram
• Victor’s hobby (its not what you would expect) and my ‘current’ hobby
• Machine Learning and the future of AI in sales
• What salespeople can do right now to increase their sales numbers.
• How Victor’s leadership style was formed and how he likes to communicate now.
• Answers to the ‘SalesChange 5’ questions.

On every SalesChange Podcast – we ask the guests to answer 5 standard questions – here are the responses from Victor Antonio.

• What was the last book you read?

Victor – I’m going to go for two – Smart Calling by Art Zobczak and Follow Up & Close the Sale by Jeff Shore – both books come with great scripts and ways to nudge the prospect towards the close without being too pushy.. Who is the leader you look up to the most? Victor – Tom Stanton – he was the first manager I worked for who really understood how to manage people and he really inspired me through his reasoning, his calmness and he just got it.

• What did you want to be when you grew up?

Victor – I wanted to be a fireman. All the way through school its what I wanted to do, my family came from Puerto Rico so it was kind of a dream for me.

• Whats the worst job you could imagine doing?

Victor  – Anything which meant I had to stay inside and not talk to anyone – I’m a truly socialable person so not being able to socialise would be the worst job. The worst job I ever had though was unloading containers, I would come home and blow my nose and all this black stuff would come out. Terrible.

• What’s the worst sales mistake you’ve ever made?

Victor – I sent my pricing to the wrong customer – basically lower pricing to one of my bigger customers. I tried to get out of it but the client didn’t buy it. Links

• Connect with Victor Antonio on Instagram
• Victor Antonio’s Youtube Channel
• Victor Antonio’s Website
• Victor’s Books on Amazon