Ep. 103 - Operationalizing Process and AI for Real Sales Impact with Paul Fuller - Part 2
Ep. 103 - Operationalizing Process and AI for Real Sales Impact with Paul Fuller - Part 2  
Podcast: Selling the Cloud
Published On: Tue Nov 25 2025
Description: In this episode of Selling the Cloud, Paul Fuller, Chief Revenue Officer at Membrain, joins KK Anderson and Mark Petruzzi for a compelling conversation on how modern sales leaders can use AI to coach more effectively, eliminate wasteful pipeline rituals, and build real self-leadership within their teams.Paul outlines how high-performing sales managers are shifting from performative metrics to meaningful enablement; using AI to flag risk, generate insights, and equip reps to close complex deals. He also shares how sales leaders can establish operating rhythms, drive accountability, and lead with trust; all while reporting to the board with metrics that prove the business value of relationships.What You’ll Learn:AI-Enhanced Coaching: How to pair red/yellow flag systems with AI insights to pinpoint stalled deals and coach with precisioCadence of Accountability: How to replace unproductive pipeline calls with actionable, written commitments that build trust and executionManager Enablement: Why coaching the coach is the next evolution in sales performance systemsBoard-Ready Metrics: Which numbers matter most to prove relationships and strategic selling actually move the needlePractical AI Use Cases: Where AI drives effectiveness now (e.g., summarization, follow-up, personalization), and where it still falls shortKey Topics:Operationalizing AI in pipeline reviews and deal strategyMoving from activity tracking to outcome coachingSystems for continuous manager developmentReal intelligence vs. performative sales theaterCRO priorities in the AI era: focus, trust, proofEnabling full-cycle reps with better content, follow-up, and insightsMeasuring relationship impact: customer engagement, strategic touches, lifetime valueGuest Spotlight: Paul FullerPaul Fuller is Chief Revenue Officer at Membrain, where he brings structure, strategy, and coaching to complex B2B sales organizations. A strong advocate for elevating leadership and execution within sales teams, Paul focuses on embedding process, insights, and AI into daily workflows to help reps and managers improve continuously.Resources & Mentions:• Company: Membrain• Book Recommendations:– The Greatest Sales Question Ever Asked by Brent Long– A Mind for Sales by Mark Hunter– The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey– Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis• Sales leader to follow: Matt Green (Sales Assembly)🎧 Listen now and follow Selling the Cloud for more real conversations with revenue leaders building tomorrow’s go-to-market playbooks.KK Anderson (00:31)So building on that, Paul, from a sales manager's perspective, let's say they're in a coaching call with the rep and there's deal after deal that's stalled. And we know that stalled deals kill quarters, right? And so what are some ways you see top sales leaders leveraging AI?or AI signals, to help coach through some of those common challenges that sellers have.Paul Fuller (00:55)we personally, do it by, coaches that managers that use our system and, are doing, but we have a really robust flagging system and a really robust ability to, look at a pipeline by a variety of factors.then you can start to layer the AI in top of it. So we've built a flagging system for years. So something has been in stage more than 15 days. Let's check this out. Let's understand it. Let's, let's figure out and based on the profile of the customer and the actions that we've taken, red, yellow, red, yellow, let's categorize those flags. where you start to get into the AI stuff is that AI can then start to deliver based on that framework, very specific things based onto other reps that have been successful and move things based on situations that have happened across the organization and based on that rep behavior itself. If you do things like tie in, tie in recordings and fathom and gong and those types of things. So you can do some really cool work there. What I found is it's best for the flags and the AI to bring up suggestions to a manager saying, Hey, here is threethree or four deals ⁓ that are specifically, let's talk these through, right? Bring up those flags. I do believe a hundred percent that it is on the manager then to dive in into those deals, understand them and human to human get that coaching on what are the barriers that are, are specifically in the way and how we're then improving.the skills, the who and the who of what we want to be and how we want to act. How are we improving that on ongoing basis? So we have a platform called Elevate within our tool set that is a, it's a cadence to coaching and cadence rhythm platform. So it ensures that we're doing the right work. we can set goals in that platform. It can bring insights from our pipeline. It can flag deals that we need to discuss.But if we don't actually have the meeting, I'm still a huge fan of that. Like we have to have those one-on-ones and dive in, discover and understand. And so for the sales manager, the most important thing data is about half of it. The other half of it as a sales manager is how am I improving as a leader in my ability to coach these deals? And they need to have a cadence on those. need to understand howCause information is not the, we need the information and we need to have it highlighted. But if there's not a rhythm by which you're continuing to improve your coaching skills and ability and dive into deals and those types of things, the sales manager, doesn't matter how much information I give them. because the sales manager in that, that is coaching a lot of times, we'll just do the same things over and over again. It's a man.why aren't you closing this? I would have closed it. that's a lot of the coaching that happened that happens today. Well, I would have done this. And that doesn't that doesn't cut it. So I think that that layer of those sales managers and those coaches really need to work on that skill.Mark Petruzzi (03:44)Right on. So Paul, let's kind of anchor this maybe around like a mini cadence. So if we're reviewing pipeline for 12 weeks at a client, you if you're doing it within your CRO role for your own company, what are the three weekly review items and the three actions that you'd mandate and who owns each and when do they need to be done?which are the ones that really drive behavior to become sticky?Paul Fuller (04:14)That's a great question. Do I have to limit it to three?Mark Petruzzi (04:16)You do not.Paul Fuller (04:18)All right. Well, again, I can only go from my experience.And, this is weird because we've been talking so much about, the who and the, core of the people that we need to become and those types of things. and then the processes, and I am going to give you an answer that I think is completely outside of that. and it's a very simple answer that I think doesn't happen, across just about everyone.I've seen there needs to be and I don't care what system you're using. don't care if you're using Excel. I don't care if you're using a membrane. I don't care if you're using a pad and paper, but on a weekly basis, every rep and every manager of that rep needs to have a full understanding and picture of an updated pipeline and the deals in those pipeline in that pipeline.And, again, our system makes this easy. makes it much more, much easier and gives the ability to do it, and flags and pulls information out of it and all that stuff. But that habit in and of itself on a weekly basis for a sales manager, is something that is skipped so often and it changes everything. second.is the cadence of, if you have that, then you can effectively coach and have a cadence and rhythm to that. And I call it a cadence of accountability. The cadence of accountability is just as important to the sales manager as it is to the sales person, as it is to the VP of sales, as it is to the CEO, right? It is.What are we committing to this week that we're going to get done for each other? And that goes back. It does go back to that who like self leadership and the ability to be a self leader, but that cadence of accountability is critical and it needs to be written down. It just, it just has to, Hey rep one, I'm a sales manager. I am going to dive in and review through your accounts and I'm going to do this for you.Okay, and I'll do it by Friday or I'll do it by next Tuesday.Do you know how you're in sales? So you know this and you're in leadership and coaching and you know this is that how frequently that gets missed and pushed to the side and in favor of busyness is, is crushing. It's crushing to a sales team. It's crushing to a sales leader and it's crushing to a forecast ultimately. All right. And the third thing that a sales, I would say that's incredibly, incredibly important.And again, we, going back to the basis, you could do this on a pad and paper is, what are the things that I am accountable to my prospects and customers for this week? My top five, right? And in, and I might, I'm going to complete those. I think just those three things, absolutely.It's why I harp so much on, the self leadership and I, what I call the real intelligence, the leadership, the service, the way if I have accepted and we've defined that together, those three things don't become necessarily easier, but they become something that I will commit to, as, a person and as a manager and as a sales team member. and they become so, so important. And so again,Our systems, everything is a glorified system around that, quite frankly, but those things are so incredibly important to make an impact and to move forward together, lead well, serve well, and to really ⁓ drive performance.Mark Petruzzi (07:28)Yeah, and you know what's really cool, Paul, about what you just walked us through is you really define what the items that are really important in the selling process as compared to things that we have done for so long. For example, we've relied on a CRM and we all know a CRM doesn't do anything to make a sales rep more effective or even more productive.And so, okay, so we spent a lot of time with a CRM process and we all know that most of the data is just really not good within CRM systems. That's a whole nother discussion for another time. But if you look at the, even things like a pipeline, what amazes me is some of the clients that I work with, when I first get in there, they love that weekly pipeline meeting and it can be an hour, many of them are an hour and a half.A few of them I've seen are two hours by the time they're done every week, just sharing all this mumbo jumbo jumbo and also just manipulation that sales reps end up doing because it's a good way to do it. So when you could put a process together in the ways that you're describing it, that takes a lot of that out of the equation. And by the way, the business KK and I run, AGS,We're moving with some products that will allow you not even to have a pipeline call each week because the information is shared so closely and who knows, maybe some of those products we work with are good fits to coordinate and integrate with some of the great things you're doing with membrane. But you really hit me on some key items there.Paul Fuller (09:02)Yeah.Yeah, we don't have a pipeline call every week. which is fascinating. If I think about it, I do have a sales team meeting every week, but it's not a pipeline call. mean, pipeline is an individual that the reason people have pipeline calls generally is, I hate to say it. it's performative at this point andMark Petruzzi (09:10)Mm-hmm.Paul Fuller (09:21)that really is it like performing, but it's more for the manager than it is for the salespeople. It's like, and, so I have a call. I took a format from one of our partners. it's a, we call it unpack, but it's updates and I do ask for short numbers, but I can look at the number because our CRM is actually clean.And actually we have a process that's built into it that understand and the sales reps agree helps them close deals. They use that process. Sometimes they get outside of the process, which is fine. They can call audibles. It's, fine, but they use that process to actually work their deals towards success. And so I don't need to have a long call where everybody's talking about their, their pipeline and individual deals and doing it in front of each other.Instead, we can start to have discussions about, what are some things that you're doing that is helping you improve your win rate? What are some things? How can I help you? And, we have discussions like that and in our number eight and then I, could say, Hey, this is what I'm really seeing in membrane. This is what the numbers are showing me. Is that true? Like, are you guys feeling that as a true, is it, how can I help you get those up?So the two hour performative pipeline call where you're forced to come in and a rep is forced to, to essentially embellish. Cause that's what they do. They want to look good in front of their, their team members. I don't, I don't need that. What I can have is a, is we can start to have just a mature discussion. Cause we've agreed that we're going to be self leaders and leaders in the organization. And we have a process by which to do that. And we can, we can talk about what's actually going on.Mark Petruzzi (10:38)Yeah.Paul Fuller (10:52)but I do trust, they have to have, there is no question like it has to be updated. That is just a habit. Like if we're going to provide this and we're going to provide this system that helps you close deals more effectively, it does have to be. And there are some things that I do need as a manager to update, but most of this is for you, Mr. Mastrip. So, you're dead on with that, right?Mark Petruzzi (10:58)Yeah.Paul Fuller (11:13)How do we drive effectiveness, not performative nonsense?KK Anderson (11:18)So Paul, I'm to take us into our final topic around focus, trust, and proof, right? Specifically from the lens of a CRO having to report up to a board of directors. And let's just start with, there are so many CROs right now that are beginning to invest in AI. Some organizations are further ahead than others, butI would say nobody wants to be left behind, right? And so if you're like, what advice would you give to your fellow CROs that are out there? Let's say they are just starting to kind of dip their toe in the AI water and they're gonna have to go to their board and ask for funding. And we know they're gonna fund what they can, boards are gonna fund what they can measure. So like in this era, what would your advice be to them on where to start?And later on, you would, some of these concepts of real intelligence, because that's really what AI, as we've talked about in this episode, allows us to do is to focus on the real which is the relationships and the trust and whatnot. So where would you tell a CRO to start in their journey?Paul Fuller (12:20)The greatest help that I've found so far, and let's talk about this in the concept and I won't talk about it necessarily from a concept of a CRO. If I can narrow that concept to almost a VP of sales in B2B sales.because I don't want to jump to the marketing side right now. I, cause there's a lot of stuff that I would, I think is really important. AI does extremely well there. So if you don't mind, I'll narrow the focus and on what we've been really talking about, which is it's the best thing that I've seen it do. And where we're heavily investing and investing on behalf of our clients as well.is summarization of data and taking things out of a manual taking things that can be taken out of a manual workflow and more effectively done by AI and so very specific examples of that. mean, call recording came in early, the fathoms came in early. I think what a wonderful tool, right? So how do youBut how do you take that data and then systemize it in a way that you can say, ⁓ man, I am going to be able to give my reps back three hours after a really good call to systemize this and to improve followup and improve communication. Right. Amazing. It helps them be more accountable. It helps them drive better, better outcomes with, with reps.I love it. It's so good. where I would, I have struggled with this one as a, as a CRO is things like the prospecting, things like AI prospecting and those types of things. Cause I get so inundated with things that I guarantee that I know. and I've not seen anybody do it well. soKK Anderson (13:48)is based on the prospect.youPaul Fuller (14:00)I struggle with that piece and I'm still figuring that out. But I know the piece, emails, LinkedIn, everything. It's just the prospecting side of AI. People have sprinted towards that. Like they have really sprinted towards that side and how are we going to make that happen? And I have not I sprinted towards how I can make my full cycle reps more effective.KK Anderson (14:03)You mean inundatedPaul Fuller (14:23)in what they're doing now to drive impact for the customer and the prospect. Like if I can have AI helped me make a conversation more effective and give me a better chance of winning that deal, I'm going to do it. And that's where I've been really heavily investing and looking. I don't think, and this is just a me thing.AI has a big place in the prospecting and that type of stuff. just, the operationalization of it has not worked well yet. in, a lot of when it's completely responsible for creating the message, getting it out, trying to get a meeting, doing all those things. I have not put, and it's partially also cause of how we operate as a business. like I have a partner network.That's how I get most of our leads in. I love our partners. I love how they operate. So they connect and they drive leads to us. So I haven't had to look as closely. but that, that would be where I would highlight, just there's been massive enhancements in empowering a good full cycle rep that understands how to sell. it's just so helpful.to drive improved output, help with notes, help with proposals, help with all those. It's so good.Mark Petruzzi (15:28)So Paul, so boards typically fund what they can measure. And we touched on that before, know, just when you were driving how these, how do you prove these items that we just were discussing to a board, to a CFO, to a CEO. So they typically fund what they can measure. How do we go about and prove that relationships matter in this?Like what three numbers should be on page one of a board book that defines like example cycle time with or versus worth without a warm sponsor or executive meeting rate by stage when we lift on strong familiar paths and how do you can define that versus you know other processes and paths that get developed along the way as well.And what targets do you focus on to make sure that you can convince the board and the executive team that this overall program that we're discussing here today works and is more productive and effective?Paul Fuller (16:27)Wonderful question. I wish I had them all laid out for you in a specific presentation and could give you the one, two, three, four. That's a magic formula. Unfortunately, I can't. Fortunately, I can't. I tend to...I tend to look at history and our historical metrics so I can look at what our future metrics could be. So if I'm looking at ARR and I'm looking at customer lifetime value and I can then see, you know, what is it, what is the number of touches and strategic touches that we need to have with a customer to increase our, lifetime value of a customer and how we're doing that and what is the level of,operation we need to have with them. So you can measure that in number of different ways, meetings per customer, conversations per customer, strategy sessions per customer, customer engagement with support, those type of things. If I can start to look at those and then I can say, what is, what is our average rate for a really good growth? And then I can say, what can AI actually help me cut down on the human element, but increase the actual strategic impact? That's really helpful.I'm sure there's a VC term for that or VC stat on that, that I don't know. but that is really, really, and I think they call it replacement to those types of things, but, that is a measure incredibly impactful. And so it's really, do we, we have the same level of service or increased level of service that will help us increase the lifetime value. andWhat do we need to invest to make that happen? Cause I already, we have proven models for this. We have proven models for this and what our people have done on an ongoing basis and what other people, know, and the type of things that we need to create that work well. I'll give you an example. I just had a meeting yesterday with a guy that I thought was ridiculously good. and it, he was selling to me and he,he created a marketing strategy document for me in 15 minutes. after we had, a structured, a structured call that he recorded on Fathom, after he used AI to research our, our market and, and the things that were out there, he had set up a couple of, agents to do that. And then he delivered me a document. He said, and how he said it, he's like, this is not going to be perfect.This is our starting point, but, and, here you go. Right. But it was, it was customized. It was me. It used my language and it was incredible. Right. Like in terms of the sales process, like I really loved that. So that to me is an enablement piece that I could help my reps be more effective in market by delivering more effective materials that are customized to a person. And I know I need to do those types of strategic documents regardless. Right. They just,in our type of complex sale, need to do that type of work. hopefully that's helpful.Mark Petruzzi (18:56)Now that very much was and let's finish up We only have a minute or two here more and we want to make sure we don't keep with you past our committed time So we're gonna do an extremely rapid fire segment here. We're gonna try to do this in about 40 seconds So we love the rapid fire segment That's why we really want to make sure we still do this with you Paul So first question first product service you ever soldKK Anderson (18:57)it'syouPaul Fuller (19:22)Printing door to door in Arizona in the Tucson summer heat.Mark Petruzzi (19:27)⁓ I was hoping you were going to say maybe Flagstaff in the summer, not Tucson in the summer. But that's a tough one.KK Anderson (19:35)Paul, who is a CRO or a CEO that you love to follow?Paul Fuller (19:39)Matt Green from Sales Assembly.KK Anderson (19:41)So look them up.Mark Petruzzi (19:41)So what,yeah, we definitely will. One leadership habit that more sales leaders should practice.Paul Fuller (19:48)self-accountability.Mark Petruzzi (19:48)beKK Anderson (19:51)My favorite question, advice that you would give to your 21 year old self.Paul Fuller (19:54)motions lie.KK Anderson (19:55)There's a story there, huh?Paul Fuller (19:57)and cut back on the drink. Partying is not the way.Mark Petruzzi (20:01)Alcohol is not the way, right? Yeah, it's kind of hard to avoid in college, isn't it? Okay, favorite sales marketing book.Paul Fuller (20:03)Yeah.there's a new one out. It's called the greatest sales question ever asked by Brent Long. Amazing. I need to throw out two other shout outs here cause I do love a mind for sales by Mark Hunter and then, the speed of trust by Steven and Mara, Covey is, just, I, it's life changing book for me.Mark Petruzzi (20:23)Yeah, I'm two for three with those books, but I've got a new one here with the Brent Long one. That's great.Paul Fuller (20:28)All right, yeah, great book, great book.KK Anderson (20:31)Okay, and what about your favorite non-business book?Paul Fuller (20:33)Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. ⁓ C.S. Lewis is my favorite author in everything he's written. It just blows me away.KK Anderson (20:43)That's awesome. Okay, well Paul, thank you so much. We had so much fun chatting with you today and we've all learned a lot.Paul Fuller (20:48)Thank you for having me on. Hopefully I wasn't too long-winded and if I was, cut it out.Mark Petruzzi (20:53)No,KK Anderson (20:54)You are awesome.Mark Petruzzi (20:55)you were great.Beautiful. Thank you to our wonderful audience and everyone out there listening.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.