The Hard Truth of Sales: "Building is Easy, Selling is Hard" | Sebastián Chiriboga

This conversation is in Spanish, please turn on English subtitles for a better experience.

What we cover in this conversation

In this episode, we sat down with Sebastián Chiriboga, CMO of Álvarez Bravo and our very first client, to discuss the real bottleneck in sales: managing high-volume lead overflow and building the human trust required to close a deal. Sebastián shares the practical journey of adopting AI, from feeling overwhelmed by WhatsApp messages to fundamentally changing his team's strategic focus.

Key takeaways

• The Core Problem: How Álvarez Bravo faced an unmanageable volume of WhatsApp leads 24/7 with a limited team.

• AI vs. Human: Why Sebastián believes AI is essential for qualifying but that humans are irreplaceable for closing complex, high-value sales like real estate.

• The Real Fear of AI: It’s not about replacing jobs. The real fear managers have is that AI will "expose flaws in their commercial management" and metrics.

• A New Metric: How implementing our agent shifted their primary metric from "volume of leads" to the much more valuable "cost per visit".

• Learning from Mistakes: What happened when the AI agent offered an expired $10,000 promotion and how setting "rails" (rieles) was crucial for success.

• The Hard Truth: Sebastián's core philosophy: "Building is easy, selling is hard".

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:52 The Foundation of All Sales: Trust
• 03:33 The Problem: Too Many WhatsApp Leads, Too Few Hands
• 06:21 The Power of Adapting Technology to the Client
• 09:47 Will AI Replace Humans in Complex Sales?
• 16:40 How AI Relieved the Sales Team's Biggest Pain Point
• 20:36 The CMO's Evolution: From Tactical Battles to Strategic War
• 23:01 The Future of AI: Optimizing Ad Spend, Not Just Leads
• 30:35 Why Some Companies Fear AI (And It's Not About Jobs)
• 34:04 Volume vs. Quality: The Strategy to Find the Right Leads
• 38:07 The New Metric That Changed the Game: Cost Per Visit
• 40:54 From the Trenches to the Strategy Room
• 48:32 When the AI Messed Up: Lessons from Errors
• 52:53 Does the AI's "Human" Feel Build Trust?
• 55:22 The Real Success Story: When the AI Does Its Simple Job
• 59:41 A Message for Marketing Managers Who Doubt AI
• 1:12:30 The Hard Truth: Building is Easy, Selling is Hard