Abigail Merrill—How to Go from AI Overwhelm to AI ROI, Run Pilots That Actually Produce Results, and Scale a Revenue Engine That Keeps Compounding

Abigail Merrill  0:00  
Sometimes we don't even have a clear view of our manual processes, and so really mapping that out is going to help us identify those specific areas that AI could be involved.

David Bush  0:17  
Welcome to the Business Builders Playbook, the show that breaks down the systems and strategies behind predictable revenue growth to win in business. In each episode, we're diving into the proven strategies that separate the winners who scale from the losers who fail. This show is sponsored by bdr.ai the AI-powered business development platform that automates your outbound prospecting, so you can focus in on closing deals instead of chasing leads. Let's get started. Hey, welcome everybody. My name is David Bush from bdr.ai And today I have a special treat for you. We're going to be talking to Abigail Merrill on the topic of AI to ROI, and how to build a revenue engine that's scalable and that is leveraging the competitive advantage of AI. If you have been overwhelmed or if you have been deeply entrenched into trying to figure out how to turn AI into ROI, I can tell you what you're going to be blown away by some of the tips that Abigail is going to be sharing with you. We're going to be taking the questions that were submitted by the participants that are the top of mind questions that business owners, business leaders, revenue leaders are the most interested in, and this is not going to be fluff. This is going to be the real deal stuff that Abigail goes around the country and the world to talk about in her speaking and her consulting, and she's going to give you the competitive advantage, so I'm glad that you're watching this live, or you're watching a recording. If you love this video, make sure that you check out the video description and see the contact details for Abigail, and make sure you connect with her and follow her on social media, because she is a thought leader, she is an innovator, she is a person that gets the job done, and with her business growth partners, she's helping to take growth-minded leaders and turn them into power players in the marketplace, and making them innovators without having to know everything about how AI.. I know there's a few of you that are with many of us just a few years, a few years ago, we couldn't even spell AI. It was like, wait a second, this is like too complex. But now we're using words like agentic AI, and we're learning so many new things so fast. So, brace yourself, grab some water, grab something to drink, and be prepared to take some copious notes. If you registered for the webinar, the recording will be sent out to you, and we'll send out some free resources that Abigail has provided to everybody that showed interest in this webinar. So, Abigail, are you, are you hydrated and ready to go today?

Abigail Merrill  2:53  
I am, I am. It's a Friday, but we still, I'm still bringing that Monday, ready for excitement energy.

David Bush  3:00  
Yes, and it's 5o'clock somewhere. So, for those of you that are watching this over the weekend, and you're just chilling, putting 10 toes up, hey, relax. We're going to get into how to identify highest ROI use cases for AI in your business. We're going to talk about the difference between AI experimentation versus AI systems that scales, and then we're also going to show you how to align AI with your revenue engine, marketing, sales, and ops to take that AI to ROI. So, let's jump in on just talking a little bit about your background. So, bring us up on how you got to where you are today.

Abigail Merrill  3:33  
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, David. Thank you for everyone out there, either watching live or a recording. So, we're recording this in April of 2026 and I have been in the generative AI space since pre-Chat GBT, so that was 2022 and these last four years have felt like a lifetime. I feel both incredibly fast and ahead, and I've been very grateful to be able to share insights and pull people along that are just starting their AI journey, and then I also feel incredibly behind because things are just moving so quickly, so I definitely want to preface that even though I am an AI consultant, I have certifications, I, you know, I've been able to work with some amazing folks and have some real numbers to help them grow their business. I still also feel like I'm learning every single day, and so you all just tuning in, joining on David and the BDR network, like that's really the first step to success. So I like to level set a little bit to let people know that they're exactly where they need to be, they're not behind, we're all learning this together, and that even the major. Foundational model players from the big companies, they don't always know how these systems work, either. Sometimes, so we are on for the ride, but I have some really concrete tips to give you. You can get started on immediately and bring back to your team. And so my background is actually working with large enterprise companies and on their sales enablement, and so that if you're not familiar with sales enablement, that really is the intercession between marketing and sales. How do we make sure that the messaging is accurate from one department to another? I've never quite understood why those departments were separate, but here we are, and so that happy middle ground, and that sales enablement, and so that really helps take some of the operations, the technology, being able to think about the systems and the workflows, and then how that actually gets marketed to the customer, either on social media or from that sales rep's interactions, and so bringing that full together. So I've always thought about ROI, it's the revenue engine, everything about what I've worked on, even pre-chat, but I got to work with a competitor on their go-to market strategy, and so having that four way into it, being able to see in real time how a chat bot worked, and now kind of since then I've kind of pulled back the layer of the onion and got really nitty gritty on how these systems actually work and not just a shiny new fun tool and now we call that like good old fashioned AI as well, so learning those skills as well, and I

David Bush  6:56  
know that there's a lot of people that are at that stage of overwhelm because the rate of information is increasing, and the rate of adoption or implementation is flattening or decreasing, because there is so much to be done. So, I'm curious, you work with a lot of growth stage companies, so what separates the businesses that kind of suffer from overwhelm and the ones that actually get an ROI from the AI?

Abigail Merrill  7:24  
Yeah, so there's a few distinct traits, and as you said, I, my firm typically works everywhere from solopreneurs to mid-sized businesses, so that could look like I'm working with a CEO and a founder of a startup to a VP of sales, so, and you know, or regional sales manager, so it's really not the company size, and it's not really the company budget, or bandwidth, or having, you know, the most experienced people on their team that understand AI, it's really just basic business acumen, starting with a problem and not a tool. So, what we're seeing, and as you know, AI excitement is everywhere. It's if it, you know, you're not putting it on your buzzwords and your KPIs, then you know, then your board is going to be asking questions, right? And so AI excitement is easy, but actually business alignment is rare. So I see that the biggest struggle is that companies that don't have leaders that are involved and are promoting this AI integration at the top, and then offering support to the departments under them to be able to offer training resources, time allotted to their team for AI counsel interactions and engagement, and really specific experimentation, and that's what I really see is the difference is we're aligning to business goals, then we look at the tools and remember the tools, our biggest resource that we have in our organizations are our human resources, right. So we're thinking about them as well at the very beginning, and then we're offering that support to them, and that is really where I see the companies of all sizes flourish, and they get that AI ROI very quickly.

David Bush  9:50  
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Abigail Merrill  11:33  
Yeah, really great question. So, I, before even talk about AI, I talk about humans, any AI integration, whether you're a leader, whether you're the lowest person on the totem pole, you have to be thinking about the humans actually using these tools. AI is unlike any other digital transformation that we've ever seen in our lifetime, okay, and, and we've said previously in your lifetime as well, so we have to really think about that, is that AI is not just another software update, if a leader is thinking of this as well, let's just check it off. Let's just have the KPIs. Let's just say that we're doing something internally that does work for a while, and it has been working for a lot of large companies. We're starting to wake up now that that is not an effective method, not only for building a culture of AI and rethinking, and it hasn't had the same compounding effects as companies that, and leaders that have wanted to embrace it, but to your point, we do have to recognize the humans and the resistance that comes with AI, unlike any other tool, and you know we've worked with a lot of salespeople, right? And a salesperson, some of the best salespeople out there, they know their craft, they've been in the industry 2030 years, right, they know how to sell, they know how to do their market inside and out, so of course, when you're thinking of AI as another digital transformation tool, our first thought is, well, you know, we tried to implement Salesforce, we tried to implement this new CRM a few years ago, and our salespeople weren't interested, they have their own tools, they have their own methods. They've been doing this a long time. We don't want to go down this road. We've seen it before, not interested, right? We've seen it, but when we think about it, not as a just another tool, another, you know, ERP software update, and we really think about the humans first using this, because in their day to day, because we have to think about this. Is AI is not limited to the workplace, it is in our homes, it is in our children's curriculum, it is in the mouths of politicians, this is everywhere, and so fear, resistance, understanding where those come from, those real human emotions come from. I find is the easiest way to plan the plan a solution and offer them also offer and one other, one other aspect to this. If you have leadership, if you're someone out there that has leadership, as David described, they're resistant, they're not interested, maybe they're burying their head in the sand, or they are just blank. Get, you know, do whatever you want. I, you know, blinders on. If that's a company you work for, you have a few different options. I work with a lot of individuals that are in this situation. How I advise them is you can do a few things. One, you can be an AI champion. You have that choice, you can use your allowed technology, maybe that's Microsoft Copilot, maybe you're able to do something on your own that's not proprietary, and you can bring that in, maybe you can't use AI tools at work, but you're going to find use cases and benefits that not only make you look good, but make money, and for the company. Okay, so what I mean by that is being an AI champion is looking internally at your unique workflow, working within the confines and the restrictions of your company's rules, no, it required. We're talking about the tools that you already have. And then I want you to start documenting what you're working on, how you've able to use AI strategically in order to save your company money. Maybe you have your own business, and you're trying to save some licenses or subscription costs. Tailor it to your unique company and your unique role. Start building those little wins, then go back to that leader that was very resistant, and the numbers will speak for themselves. I've seen a lot of, a lot of success helping individuals be AI champions. The other option you can do is, if you really are in a company that is not seeing the bigger picture, then you have the ability in your off time, in during your work, you get sometimes you get paid professional development. This is on you to go, and while you still have, you know, a full-time job, you, you go and learn as much as you can, then be ready for a company that is a lot more AI emergent or AI native within their organization structure.

David Bush  17:34  
Yeah, so business owners, founders, CEOs, be the one that is open and curious to learning about how you can adopt AI and use collective intelligence from the entire organization, so that you're championing it as a group, right? Together everyone achieves more, and if everybody has a role and responsibility of how they can adopt or implement AI into the organization to increase, increase the productivity, the performance, the profitability. Now you're going to end up having ownership with all of your staff, because you know the human resources department is going to have ownership and their ideas, and then the operations is going to have ideas, and I'm assuming that sales, marketing, if everybody's kind of bringing ideas to the table and staying open and curious, rather than saying, "Oh, that doesn't work, or, "You know, I'm sure that there's some people out there with a fixed mindset that are trying to, you know, condemn change because they want everything to just stay the same. So, let's jump into a couple more questions that we got submitted. So, Who do you typically see, or where do you typically see companies wasting time or misapplying AI early on.

Abigail Merrill  18:46  
Well, we kind of touched on it. It's shiny object syndrome, right? They're seeing a competitor do something, someone in their organization wants to try a fancy new tool, they have some licenses because their vendor has a new AI feature built in, so they just start turning things on and jumping on bandwagons, buying licenses for whoever, without a strategy, so that sort of fear falling behind FOMO those purchases usually end in regret. We know that, right? And so, not aligning to strategy is the biggest challenge I see, and that that might not be a big deal for a large enterprise company that has money to burn, but at the same time, if we're just flipping things on, then your business owners internally are going to be overwhelmed, and AI stops becoming something that decreases time and. Reduces friction and starts adding a third job to their plate or a second job to their plate, and so thinking about that is we don't want AI for AI's sake, we want to be really strategic with where we're putting our dollars, where we're putting our time, every every feature we want to be thinking about, does this align with our business goals? How are we going to track that this has worked? I do also see a lot of pilots that are not true pilots, it's just dabbling and experimentation, and oh, I think someone in it is handling that, or somebody over in marketing created a tool, but we don't really know about it. We don't really know what's going on. You touched on it a little bit previously. Is that if you're not involving different departments and having a clear AI strategy, holistic strategy, then you're also going to be wasting resources, you're going to be wasting time. People are redoing projects unknowingly, they're buying extra licenses when they don't actually need them, or the utilization rate is down because there hasn't been any training offered at the same time we have experiments that are happening and they're not being documented, so what's worked, what didn't work, not taking the what's worked and sharing that back internally, those are missed opportunities that seem like you know, pretty obvious when you, when you think about it, but we're moving so fast, we have different department silos, just naturally within bigger organizations, and so it can get easy to not know what's happening, you have to be very intentional with following up, setting pilots up for success, and I'd love to share a little bit more about what that looks like, and it's crucial that we are making sure that we're going through this process of creating a pilot, not just because we want to see what work, what worked and what didn't work, but this is actually going to be our competitive edge, because the more successful pilots that we can run that. Follow a framework I call the AI for ROI framework. The faster you're going to get compounding results and more revenue that is going to set your set your company apart from your competitors.

David Bush  23:00  
Is there a filter? And I know that you, you probably are going to go into this in a little bit, but I want to just kind of catch you right now on a filter that's a quick filter that allows you to make a quick decision to adopt and implement, or you know, like the whole Eisenhower matrix, you know, do delay, delegate, and delete. I think that that's kind of a good strategy around just AI adoption, because there are certain things that you want to do that would eliminate repetitive work. It would end up making people more productive, or raised level of performance, raise revenue, raise sales, and create new, create new products, you know, eliminate extra staff, so that staff could be repurposed in a different direction, and so I'm just curious, is there a simple way of filtering out all of the noise? I saw a video asking multiple questions here, but I saw a video that talked about Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, it was from mr. Wonderful from the Shark Tank, and he said there was something unique about these two individuals, is that they had a significant different ratio of signal to noise compared to everybody else. So, signal was they knew exactly what they needed to do to move the ship forward, no fun intended, Elon, but there's a lot of people out there that there's so much noise that I think that there's in need of a filter to determine, like, what do I put my hand to, because I'll have, like, a strategy, and then all of a sudden it'll be like, well, Grok just launched this new rocket bot, whatever, and all of a sudden I'm like, I don't know anything about that, but everybody's raving about it. So I'm just curious, is there a filter that you can determine on strategy?

Abigail Merrill  24:48  
Two things you have to actually create your strategy and your goal first, that makes it very easy, black and white does. Align does this new tool, does this new headline that I saw, does that align with my goals? So you got to be really nitty gritty about what your goals are, and then you have to have that steadfastness, and that's come as

David Bush  25:13  
far away with define the strategy, like what are the key components of a strategy, just so that I'm clear, because I think I'm clear, but I just want to make sure, what is strategy, is it is it mission, vision, long term goals, objectives, like that kind of strategy.

Abigail Merrill  25:29  
Yes, exactly. So we want to make sure any business acumen, my framework is literally built on business acumen 101 big five consulting firms, and their steps, and when we're thinking about what a business goal is, and I help people walk through this, it's a SMART goal, so it's specific, measurable, attainable, relative and time-bound, and so what that means, and these strategy documents can be large KPIs that they send out throughout the organization, but most often it's a week by week, a month by month, a quarter by quarter, especially for our sales team. We know what our numbers are supposed to hit, so if you align your strategy with a specific something that you want to achieve, that could be I need three more leads in my pipeline by in 30 days from this new vertical that we're trying to tap into in this state, like very, very specific, and when you have that in mind and you know exactly what that smart goal, what that business goal is. Then any sort of noise that comes outside of that and not attached to the pilot that you're running, so we can, we can talk through that. Then it becomes very easy, right? But it, it becomes very easy to say, okay, that's not aligned, this is, but I said steadfastness as well, because you touched on it a little bit, people that have growth mindsets really truly understand that we have the capability to grow or to shrink, right? We have that, we understand that consciousness, we understand that mindfulness, that we have that power over over us, over ourselves. We have to be steadfast up to a certain point, right. So, and I have those time-bound goals because we can be, we can run a pilot for 14 days steadfast, not changing anything, not making any changes, adding new features. We're just waiting for those results, and we're being consistent with it. That does take some willpower, that does take some mind over matter. I'm consciously putting the decision, the blinders on, and we're working as a team, or I'm doing this on my own, and we're going to wait until those results come in, and then we're going to be able to to make pivots and changes, so that it is a two-part.

David Bush  28:41  
So I'm gonna ask you a follow-up question, and this is, I mean, we could do a whole weekend seminar on this,

Abigail Merrill  28:46  
and I, yeah, yeah, if,

David Bush  28:48  
if my implementation is not staying, that's the best way, if my implementation is not staying in correlation with innovation, so you know, if I'm implementing a DOS computer, and there's some fancy, faster, better technology that's being innovated at a 10th of the cost of implementing DOS, how do I know to give up on that strategy that I created at the beginning of 2026 because that's where I feel like the people are at. It's like innovation is outpacing implementation, and so when you feel like you have a strategy and you're going to work on it, and we're going to have a support chat bot, and we're going to have a sales chat bot, and all these things start getting implemented, and it's like, oh yeah, that's so, that's so yesterday, like now there's this whole new thing that's 10 times better. How do you get away from kind of struggling with that whole concept and getting behind the times on your innovation?

Abigail Merrill  29:58  
So I really. You think in order to be a company that is both adopting innovation and rooted in business acumen, you have to take that balanced approach. You have to move quickly, have to do maybe a cost benefit analysis, and say, "Okay, we tried that old computer, we have these results. Here's the cost. It's a sunk cost, so we have to have basic economics that go into it, and we have to think about, okay, what's our alternative, and we have to test on that alternative, I teach a framework that's built on agile methodology, because we have to be moving quickly, but not in a, we're trying to rush and make the wrong mistake, or open ourselves up to risk, or just going for going sake we're making compounding iterative changes, and that's okay, because if, and I can tell you a little bit, startup culture very different than corporate culture, it rewards moving quickly, it rewards failing fast and moving forward, seeing what worked didn't work. That's actually a culture you can create even within a larger team and a larger organization. And so, yes, we have to be moving quickly. Yes, there are going to be many, many pivots, but if we start to realize and we start to allow ourselves to step into this is the new normal, and we don't see ourselves as we're in a hurricane and we're getting blasted, if we really think about it from a, okay, this is in my control. I'm going to move this step, I'm going to go step one, step two, step three. Anything that happens, any headlines, any overwhelm, it's going past me. I'm focused on this. This is what I can control. And then after step three, we see what works, we iterate, we do it again, and so we're creating that constant change, but it's controlled change.

David Bush  32:38  
Yeah, and it's really.. I can imagine just hear the word control the controllables, and you know you can't control ongoing innovation and shiny objects, you can control what matters most, and that is, you know, gaining a competitive advantage, increasing ROI on the AI adoption. So, my side questions got us behind schedule, so I'm gonna put us into hyper speed and put you on the hot seat here. So, okay. Top three highest impact AI use cases that you're seeing right now across marketing, sales, or operations. What are they?

Abigail Merrill  33:10  
Yeah, so for sales, on I'll take this in buckets. For sales, it is the implementations and the integrations of live AI chat monitoring, being able to record phone calls, being able, we have these AI note takers joining us sometimes on calls. I'm not sure if you've seen, sometimes people's note takers will join and they're not there, that's a whole nother problem, but I will say, in the in for sales specifically, AI note takers, like a fireflies, like an otter, like a, you know, built in now to Teams and Google Meet, is able to just go back, see what, what was actually said, being able to read the sometimes these are video recordings. This actually has any sort of video AI note taker that joins you. That's great for your sales leadership training as a manager. You can sit down with your new hires and say, hey, I took a look at that video that you had with that new lead I sent you found some really interesting points. When I went back, we had a misstep here, or this didn't quite align with our marketing and our positioning here. And just going back and using it as a teaching moment, I know I use them for myself, so this actually is great for cognitive load, this is great for follow-ups and next steps, just automatically having the AI follow up with that in with that contact, if you follow up within 24 hours, as you guys know. You have a 60% higher chance of getting that sale if you can get that quote out to them within 24 hours. The faster you can do it, it increases your likelihood that you're going to make that sale, right. And so meeting intelligence and being able to take those meeting transcripts and having them automatically updated in a CRM for the salesperson for the next, maybe sales and engineer, maybe it's passed on to a different region, so those are just 101 Start looking into the tools that you already have and seeing if those features are now embedded, and you can be able to start adopting them for your sales team. Demo scheduling, as I said, follow-up automation, Calendly email workflows. It really depends on the tool that you're using, but if you're a scrappy startup, there are a lot of automations you can do with Zapier and make.com and really those good old-fashioned triggers are fantastic when it comes to planning out a consistent workflow, and things that that you're not going to miss. A perfect example, I have another client they're in sales, they go to conferences all the time, right. We're collecting business cards, we're trying to write down who we spoke to, taking having a workflow and being able to say, okay, I made a note, I made a note to myself in the CRM of, you know, whatever CRM it is, they specifically use Salesforce, and then that automatically triggers an email out to that client and say, Thank you so much for meeting me, here's my LinkedIn, or excuse me, here's my Calendly or Teams. I'd love to schedule some time to follow up, very generic, but it could be tailored. It's that immediacy that AI is really helping with that to scale. We never, we're hearing that cold outreach and cold email is very um very unreliable now, and in 2026 specifically, and that has a lot to do with the fact that AI is actually flooding the market with AI quick, slightly customized emails, we're getting domains at scale, 1520 domains, and there are services out there that are able to do that for you, but as we know, good sales people, the right level of customization and is valuable, and that human interaction is going to trump any other just quick, quick, quick mass email, so not forgetting how, how, and when we should be using AI doesn't make sense for our brand, our reputation, our style within our within our vertical within our business, the price and caliber of who you're speaking with, you know. So, really knowing your market, knowing your brand can be really helpful. On, should we use AI or not, here. Okay, another thing. Any questions on sales? I could go on and on, but I wanted to answer your question rapid fire.

David Bush  38:50  
No, that's absolutely right. I mean, that's.. I mean, obviously, what's a place that we play in is inside of business development rep bdr.ai Is that we're actually doing a lot of those things, but we're doing the combination of, like, you said, personalization at scale, but doing a high-tech, high-touch combination. So, if you just, if you just use AI email or some sort of a mod AI automation in your CRM, you're going to get diminishing returns, even if you do it at high volume, and it's going to be like spam email, right? If you use a combination of high tech and high touch, so you might have an initial message or email or connection request that becomes automated, but it's followed up with a level of personalization where there's somebody that's a human being, not an AI, doing that's just out there, you do, do, do. It's actually somebody that's stepping in and providing a small amount of time to find a personal touch that makes the person on the other end question, "Wow, this must be your real human being. That's not an automated system, it's actually somebody that's you. Interested in having a convernate conversation, and I think that, that you know, the whole term of augmented intelligence, or you know, digital workers empowering human workers, and using that as a combination, and that's that's part of an art and a skill. It's not easy for every single company to figure out how to do that with their particular team, but that's a strategy that we highly believe in, and we're finding great success in that. So, was there anything else you wanted to add? Because I want to get to the assessment of where companies can go to find where AI is going to have the fastest ROI in their specific business.

Abigail Merrill  40:35  
Yeah, let's move on.

David Bush  40:36  
Cool. So, assessments, is there anything that you can offer individual business owners, leaders on where to go to find their biggest ROI opportunities with AI.

Abigail Merrill  40:48  
Yeah, so I have a three-phase framework. I've been touching on it a little bit. Phase one is align, phase two is integrate, phase three is scale, and what that means is in that first phase, you're going to be looking at what your current processes are. We're going to be actually looking through what does the accounting role actually do for this. What are the touch points from having a LinkedIn conversation, LinkedIn conversation with someone to actually signing that proposal and deciding to work with us. So, sometimes we don't even know that. Sometimes we don't even have a clear view of our manual processes, and so really mapping that out is going to help us identify those specific areas that AI could be involved, and to your point with BDR, AI shouldn't be involved everywhere, but understanding what that process looks like, knowing where AI can be and where it shouldn't be, is really that first step. Second step is identify that goal, that business goal we talked about identifying a smart goal. We want to make sure that if we're going to run a pilot, we're going to run a test that we have a goal in mind of what we're trying to achieve. Sometimes it's as easy as a sales number, we're trying to get 20 meetings at a, at a conference, we're trying to get eight more people in our pipeline between our team. It can be something as simple as that, right? Then we want to align, and this is where my framework really pulls from any other. It's very different from any other AI framework out there is safety and governance right at the top. We are thinking about what's right for our brand. We're thinking about can we turn things on, shouldn't we turn things on? Where are the possible risks if we're using HubSpot, and they say, "Hey, we have this new AI feature. What does that mean for our customers' data? What have we said to our customers on how we'll plan on using AI tools? This is a great opportunity for small businesses, even if you don't have some internal AI council governing an 11 page document, I help with this template, two pages, just knowing where AI should be and when humans should be in the loop, it can be very simple, and then once we have those things aligned in that phase one, then we're going to be able to start looking at tools, what could possibly solve the problems that we identified, the manual work that we do, our goals that we're trying to achieve from the first phase, what's going to help us fly under the radar. We're not trying to ask a it or rustle, ruffle any feathers. We're let's try to use the tools that we already have in our tool belt. I'm sure you've heard in the past that only 10% of these big enterprise level beast of a tools are even used right, and you know things are changing. We're, we're being able to be more agile, but a lot of times the tool that you're looking for, something an AI feature might already be built in to a subscription or a license that you already have, right. And so we're going to look at that, maybe we integrate something new, or maybe for this first run we stick with our tools that we already have. Then we're going to map it out, we're going to say, okay, here's the actual test we're running, and this might be a new concept for for for some individuals out there, but. We're going to test it like it's a scientific method, right. We're going to say, here's what we're going to do on this date. We're going to turn this new feature on. We've already mitigated the risks. Maybe that could be as simple as, you know, we're not going to turn on an AI automation feature. We're just going to have it run at this level, or like at a level that we already have, right? So we're not trying to over engineer knowing where humans are going to be in the loop. Okay, this person actually is going to press send. We're not going to have AI do that for us. So figuring out mapping that out, that that workflow out, and then running that for 14 to 30 days, and that's where this steadfastness, this is where we have to have real conviction not to turn anything else on, not to make any changes during our pilot phase, and that's a real pilot when we have learned in the past, I'm sure you were familiar with the MIT report that came out. They headlined back in the fall that said 95% of pilots fail and have zero ROI, and we've seen some additional numbers come out recently, very similar. And what those were great examples of is they weren't actually pilots, so when we set up a pilot with a fixed date and time, a goal in mind aligned to a business goal, and we have it run for a set date, and we know exactly who's involved, the stakeholders and the workflow that needs to happen, that's a true pilot, right, that's what we can test. And then phase three is, let's see what worked, what didn't work, and to your point earlier, we have to share, we have to think about AI as a from the lens of change management. If anyone's familiar with that, change management really is thinking about how humans integrate new systems and behaviors into their workplaces, and it's a whole, it's a whole society, it's a whole international framework that's out there, but it's becoming very, very important, not just in the HR world anymore, or the coaching world, it's becoming incredibly important when we're thinking about AI. How do we create a culture that is not overwhelmed by the hurricane, a culture of let's iterate, let's test, let's see what works. Excited about finding new business solutions that save the leaders money, save time, as you said. Companies, employees able to reinvest their own time. We want employees like that. We want growth mindset, and so we actually have to create that cycle. We, as leaders, can create a culture of sharing of iterating, and then with also in that phase three, when we're seeing what worked, we're documenting what worked, what didn't work, and we're looking for those opportunities to scale higher, maybe it's adding some more automation, maybe it's turning on a new feature, maybe it's getting that next license up, and we're going to repeat this framework every 14 to 30 days. I've seen companies that make tremendous progress and run two to three pilots in a Q period, and their results are 10 times better than if we had that longer runway, and we just don't have that runway anymore. The old models were 12 to 18 months of digital transformation. We have to be moving quicker, and this AI for ROI framework really, I see, helps leaders do that in a systematic, repeatable way.

David Bush  49:04  
Yeah, so would this framework be the same as an AI adoption roadmap, or is that different?

Abigail Merrill  49:09  
Nope, that this is it. And you can, you can have an overall strategy if you have a larger company, you can have a full strategy and say we don't know exactly how we're going to get there, but in one year's time we want to have x revenue goal, and we want to hire this many people, we want to achieve this in EBITDA, right? So, like, we, we have those overarching goals, but the actual groundwork of making that overarching KPI strategy effective is by having these repeatable frameworks and pilots at the ground level, so then we start edging closer to. Those overarching goals. I'll also say, if you really want to have a unique strategy, is going ahead and setting up that interdepartmental AI council. If you have the bandwidth, maybe you're a company that has, you know, 10 to, you know, 30 people, even then you can have a good, decent two to three people AI counsel, and as you said earlier, David, we want it to be someone from legal, we want it to be someone from HR, we want someone from IT, we want someone from sales, someone from operations. If we have a company that way, that size, and most of them do, we want to have a unique AI council that can really be that first step. If a, if a department is coming to to the council, and says, "Hey, we have this new pilot we want to run. We've already gotten results in pilot one. Now we're seeing some opportunities that we actually could go, um, even we could chip away at our pipeline numbers if we got this additional license for this additional sales engineer, and like, you have to go to that council, and that's not a ton and ton of people, right? You're thinking, okay, that's bureaucracy, we don't want that, but it's actual that level of risk assessment that is really helpful when it comes to scaling at a larger scale, and so you do want just a tiny bit of friction, you don't, you don't want just anybody to be able to make decisions, and when it comes to risks and turning things on, but an AI council can really look at that strategically and against that working document, you have that AI safety and governance policy that you set up in phase one, that's a working document that changes all the time, so you need to have an AI council or someone, some team that is helping with that maintenance of

David Bush  52:19  
it. Good. Well, as we land the plane here, I'd like to get some insights as to how you work with companies and leaders to help them to pull all these pieces together. So, obviously, your speaker and you come in and you do, you know, top front of the stage type of presentations, but if an organization obviously was interested in hiring you for that, that's pretty straightforward, but if we're going to work with you as a consultant, and you're actually going to be helping us to build the AI to ROI framework roadmap and implementation. I don't know if there's ongoing training or consulting on that, but just walk us through what that looks like.

Abigail Merrill  52:56  
Yeah, thank you for asking. So, I give everybody 15 free minutes, my team and I, we will see what you have. We will talk to you. We will find out if you're the right candidate for us, but we work with solopreneurs up to mid-size businesses, revenue-minded, so that could be a sales team or it could just be a solopreneur in the small business that is wearing all the hats, but we have an audit. We will walk you through. We will have sprints. We can do workshops. My favorite is the AI for ROI sprint, and bringing people through this phase one and phase two, and we have a package that sets them up, and after that first 30 day engagement, they're on, they're doing it on their own, they have access to a Slack channel of other folks also engaging in the AI for ROI framework, but helping, we want that peer to peer education, but my favorite is getting people jump started. You have all the tools, you have the resources. If you have the excitement, I love working on retainer, and sometimes there are opportunities to not expand your head count, but maybe you do need a AI internal council set up, and someone out external to manage that, so I do have retainer clients as well, but typically it's an audit sprint and retainer, if that's what, and those are kind of in that three bring me through

David Bush  54:40  
great, so contact information will be within the video description and the podcast show notes, and so everybody will have quick access to Abigail, and to get that 15 minute consultation. Lots of great resources, follow her on social media, she gives lots of great content, and just a fun person. That's why I like working with her, is they, I mean, you know, look at the smile, like when you talk to somebody on Zoom and they're frowning, or they're just, you know, kind of like, man, we gotta, we gotta run through this, but she just brings a sense of joy and freshness to the new innovation that's coming at us, and I think that that's required, I mean, that's that's kind of a bonus of working with somebody that just has a joyfulness about working on something that can be oftentimes frustrating, yeah, it can, it could be very, yeah, it could be concerning, it could be fearful, like you can get into this idea that you're going to lose to the competition, and and she keeps you into the winning mindset of no, we got this, and we're going to crush this, and we're going to turn this into a long-term competitive advantage versus something that just turns into nothing and doesn't produce an ROI. So, super thankful for you today, and yeah, I'm I'm going to ask you one final question that's

Abigail Merrill  55:55  
a personal

David Bush  55:55  
question,

Abigail Merrill  55:56  
please.

David Bush  55:56  
If, if a company wanted to go to work on releasing some agentic AI agents to not just do certain things that land things back on the owner operator's desk, like here you go, now do something with it, but you know there seems to be more and more of a craze that's going on right now, where if you can do x, you can launch these agents to actually do work for you, so that you don't have to continue to do the work. Is that actually true? Do you actually see companies having things that are actually completely being done by an agent? No, no,

Abigail Merrill  56:39  
no,

David Bush  56:39  
that's what I thought.

Abigail Merrill  56:40  
It's hype, it's all hype, and it has been AI agents are have been around for quite a while, but the term AI agent and can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I will say we're not at a place in time, maybe two to three years, where true high dollar value expert professionals are able to do more than 50% of their work with agents. We're just not there yet. I mean, and in the legal field, and some of finance, that could be closer to five plus years out, so what we're trying to see really is where the hype is, where actually AI agents can benefit us, and where really we just need things connected to each other and things running on automations, because that's the biggest misconception is that an AI agent that is able to kind of think and do a lot of tax on its own and doesn't come back to you. There's a great example of this that can take multi steps on your behalf, but you have to stay in the loop. It will come back to you and say, you know, do you want to authorize this? Is this really what you want? Are you sure? Like those, those barriers, those little guardrails, that actually is the best for your own training, and also for the training of these models, and keeping the humans in the loop is in getting the muscle trained within your own team to keep humans in the loop, and not go off and do you know, open claw or whatever, and then you end up as a headline on the, as you know, a data breach. Think about, think about your company's brand, your reputation, what you owe your customers. Because if I can leave you all with anything, it's the most important skill that is going to be more valuable than any other tool is human authenticity. We have to be our authentic selves, and that's transparent about what we're doing with our data. What was AI and what wasn't AI? This transparency that's going to build the trust with your customers, that's going to take you farther than any other fancy tool that's out there.

David Bush  59:29  
That's great, great way to close this up today. Abigail, thanks so much for your wisdom and your smile for all of us today. You're sending us off with the big smile that is turning that frown upside down. Thanks everybody for joining us and watching. If you like this video, please share it and follow Abigail Merrill on social media, and we'll put the contact information in the video description and the podcast show notes. So, thanks everybody. Have a great day.

Abigail Merrill  59:55  
So much, Devon. Thanks.

David Bush  59:59  
Thanks for tuning in. To the Business Builders Playbook. If this episode gave you some plays that you can start running in your business today, hit subscribe and share with another revenue leader who's tired of the pipeline grind. Building predictable revenue isn't something you figure out alone. Whether you're looking to automate your prospecting with bdr.ai or you just want to talk through the growth challenges you're facing, reach out. We help business leaders just like you to build systems that actually scale. And if you're ready to stop being your company's highest paid prospector, let's have a conversation. Reach out to us@bdr.ai Until next time, let's keep building,

Unknown Speaker  1:00:36  
you.