AI For Targeting Companies With Intent To Buy With Aviran Yaacov
The climax of the digital future probably lies in artificial intelligence and the essential power of automation it has to offer. For Aviran Yaacov, harnessing its incredible potential to target clients with the intent to buy has been a huge breakthrough for their work. Joining Chad Burmeister, the CEO and Co-Founder of EcoPlant Technological Innovation, LTD explains how they leveraged AI in manufacturing and account targeting, all powered by ZoomInfo. Aviran also relates this to the challenges they encounter in sales and how it impacts their operations as a whole.
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AI For Targeting Companies With Intent To Buy With Aviran Yaacov
I have a special guest, Aviran Yaacov from EcoPlant. We're going to talk about how they're leveraging artificial intelligence in their processes. Before we get into that, I would like our audience to get to know who you are. How did you get to where you are now? When you were your kids' age, what made you passionate? When you walked out of the house in the morning, what lit you up?
Maybe it's one of your first memories that you got when you're six years old or something like that. One of my first memories was my father was an Army guy. I was in the Army base. Almost 30 years of his career, he was on the Israeli Air Force. One of my memories was inside the Air Force base, seeing the airplanes, all the combats, the F-16s and all the stuff. He made sure that he took care of the air compressors that started those airplanes. This is one of the first memories. Maybe it's also related to what we're doing now because he's one of the cofounders of the company. I want to be a pilot to see everything from the sky to see the big picture.
We have that in common because I remember in high school, I researched what kind of income you could expect as a pilot. Back then, it wasn't very good. I was like, "I can't afford to be a pilot." I think it has changed nowadays. Once you have tenure, it's probably okay. It's interesting with the compressors because you're in that business now and monitoring that. How has that thread of when you were a kid to now? How does that tie into the work you're doing now?
You can actually help the world to do something better for everyone.
First, we want to make a change in the world. Air compressors are one of the biggest energy consumption equipment that you can find in factories. Ninety percent of the manufacturing processes have air compressors. When you learn and understand the problem that according to the US DOE, almost 50% of the production of a compressor is going to waste because of many reasons like leaks on the pipes. You don't see the air leak. You just hear it. Also, there is overcapacity. You have a lot of redundancies, blockages, leakages, poor maintenance, a lot of problems. You find that you can help the world and do something better for the world. My father has a lot of years of experience. I heard lots of stories of how he can optimize, improve compressor efficiency and save CO2. I thought, "Why don't you do something to change the world?" We can do a lot of stuff from high-tech in AI but leveraging technology and taking the AI to replace that, you can make the world a better place. It is what makes me feel good in the morning when I wake up.
It's interesting because I can apply it to the sales process too. You buy leads or pay money to advertise and then you give them to a sales team. I can't tell you how many times I've been frustrated with the leaks in that pipeline. You solve for air compressors. I help companies solve for their sales team so that they don't see as much leakage. It's interesting because AI can be applied to both of those cases quite uniquely. Is your sales team leveraging AI at all in their sales process? Do they use an email tool? How do they get their data? How are you going about selling your products and finding new customers?
I will not mention other companies or brands that we are using. You don't want a free commercial. We are using a few products in the market. They know how to find the specific roles in the manufacturing company because it's a complex sales process. B2B is always more complex than B2C. I see it as a longer process. You need to engage more people. We use tools that help us to identify the exact keywords and trends. Those guys in the factory search for solutions for their problems. For example, if there is a guy who is a plant engineer and he used the words, "CO2, air compressors, savings," I can find all these words and say, "He's probably searching for something. I can reach out to him and maybe get a quicker engagement or response." We use a few tools that help us to get faster to people.
Intent To Buy: One of the biggest energy consumption equipment you can find in factories is compressors.
I think the term is intent data, what you're using there. My book, AI for Sales, covers 21 chapters of 21 technologies that are not related to my company. I have no problem advertising those other products. Is it Bombora? Are you using something like a Bombora?
Do you know ZoomInfo?
Yes, they're chapter one in the book. I'm very familiar with Henry Schuck. He has a second house in Las Vegas that he said, "Chad, anytime you need to stay at our second house in Las Vegas, you're welcome to it."
If used correctly, AI can make the world a better place.
I'm going to be there for a conference. It's a trip for two.
That's cool that even your company that is doing things in manufacturing can leverage artificial intelligence not just in manufacturing your own product but also in the sales motion to find people who are searching for those things. Where do you see things headed? Have you seen anything coming down the pipe in sales that you think is interesting for the remainder of 2021? What do you see coming down the road for sales related to AI?
When you leverage good products of AI and using it for your sales team, it’s making those leads turning from an MQL, the Marketing Qualified Leads, to SQL. You see the conversion rate. I see down the road that we will use more and more AI on our services and processes. Also, integrate it into our CRM. It's also very important to integrate all those interactions and make sure that we are not missing anything. I see us more integrating those processes and products into our systems in the company.
Intent To Buy: AI can adjust reality, which is the main difference between just being preset.
It's built right into the workflow. It seems to me that the CRM providers will start to roll up some of these different point vendors or vice versa. ZoomInfo may get into the CRM space and become a competitor to somebody like Salesforce. Is there anything else that you think would be interesting for our audience to share about EcoPlant and the future of AI?
We use AI on our own product. It's one of the things that we are differentiating ourselves from other companies in the market. We invented a dynamic AI control platform to control the air compressors on a dynamic basis. Now, what you have in the market is just a static control system. It's predefined profiles. Similar to Salesforce, when you have abilities to learn from your own activities or processes, the system automatically gives you recommendations or real actions. This is what's so beautiful about AI, adjusting the reality and changes. This is the difference between AI and a preset or something that a human developed without a way to change.
I remember visiting Breckenridge Brewery in Colorado. It was my brother's birthday. There was this little computer in the corner. It was on the ground with the ethernet cable plugged in. My little nephew was probably fifteen at the time. He went, "What's that?" She went, "That's the computer that runs the AI for us." He said, "Okay," and then he started asking questions. He went, "What does it do?" "That's what creates the right proper mix of hops, barley and whatever else goes into these things." He was like, "How does it work?" She said, "The first time we deployed it was terrible. It couldn't come close to a human because it mixed everything up and messed it up. It's been running for about a month." She said, "It has learned and it doesn't get anything wrong. It's perfect." I was like, "It's very interesting how that works overtime and that AI gets smarter." It's going to be an interesting next couple of decades for our kids and our kids' kids. That's for sure.
Aviran, this has been a fabulous conversation. I thank you for sharing about EcoPlant and your leverage of AI in the sales motion and within your product. Shout out to Henry Shuck who came up with DiscoverOrg in the first place, merged with ZoomInfo, RainKing and a number of others. It's funny. They're the first chapter in the book. It all starts with the data. If you don't get the data right, then everything else goes wrong from there, bad gas in the tank. Congratulations on your successes. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Chad.
We'll catch you on the next AI for Sales show.
