Coffee Dreamin’ founder Royce Hall sat down with Patrick Monnot, founder of Pod, an AI deal coach and deal intelligence platform built for sellers navigating complex, high-ACV motions. If you work mid-market or enterprise, you know the drill: long cycles, big buying committees, and plenty of places to drop the ball.

In this conversation, Patrick and Royce unpack how Pod guides reps to the right actions on the right deals, how to operationalize sales methodologies in-game (not just as CRM fields), why the best AEs are borderline obsessed with their buying committees, and the product lessons that shaped Pod’s approach.

Complex Sales Motions Don’t Need More Automation, They Need Better Strategies

Patrick’s core thesis is simple: most organizations overspend at the top of the funnel and underinvest in converting qualified pipeline. Lead gen is a firehose; conversion is a leaky bucket.

In complex sales, the problem isn’t activity; it’s effectiveness. Reps lose deals because they’re not engaging the right stakeholders, not prioritizing the right opportunities, and not executing consistently day to day.

Pod plugs into the systems reps already use, including CRM, email, calendar, call recordings, and even social. Then it surfaces the most pressing deals, along with the specific next actions most likely to increase win probability and shorten cycle time.

That “virtual top performer” framing matters. Pod isn’t trying to replace the rep. It’s trying to give every AE the pattern recognition of a President’s Club seller. It’s about what to do, with whom, and when.

That’s a subtle but important distinction in an era where AI is often equated with automation. For transactional motions, sure, bots can carry a lot of the weight. But for seven-figure contracts with tangled buying committees, human judgment is the main event. The job of AI is to sharpen that judgment in the moments that count.

Methodologies Are Only Useful If They’re Used In-Game

Most teams implement methodologies by training the team and adding fields to Salesforce. No one really trusts that data, and those fields become stage-gate chores. Patrick’s point: frameworks like MEDDICC, SPICED, SPIN, BANT, Challenger only create value when they’re operationalized inside the work before a call, after a call, when diagnosing deal health, and while planning the next move.

Pod analyzes the deal through the lens of the framework you use (including custom ones) and shows exactly how well each element has been covered so far. More importantly, it recommends what to go after next to deepen understanding and move the deal forward.

Instead of turning reps into robots marching down a checklist, Pod augments the rep’s natural style with real-time guidance that keeps the conversation purposeful. You still build rapport, read the room, and improvise. You’re just doing it with a clear sense of where the gaps are and how to close them.

AI as Augmentation, Not a Replacement for the Human Craft

Patrick’s not shy about it: enterprise sales is intrinsically human. People sign big contracts with people they trust. You earn that trust by listening well, asking the right questions at the right time, and aligning a vision across multiple stakeholders. AI’s role is to clear the path so reps spend more of their time on the human parts with less admin thrash, fewer blind spots, and more deliberate actions.

There’s a difference between planning and a plan. You don’t rigidly march through “step 1–2–3” in every meeting; you adapt. But you still need a destination. The best systems provide sellers with a clear, directionally sound, and flexible flight plan, anchored in outcomes.

That’s where coaching beats automation. And it’s why “robots selling to robots” is a funny thought experiment, not a near-term reality for complex B2B.

The Best AEs Obsess Over the Buying Committee

If there’s one behavior Patrick sees over and over in top performers, it’s intentionality around the buying committee. Not just “our ICP is a VP of X,” but a detailed, evolving map of who’s involved, how they’re feeling, what they care about, and what it will take to bring them along. Engage them early with a tailored business case, and you de-risk the back half of the cycle.

Pod helps here with what Patrick calls contact sentiment. By analyzing emails, notes, and calls, it becomes clear how each stakeholder is trending, including who’s heating up, who’s cooling off, and where attention is needed.That gives reps a way to see around corners. If your economic buyer is trending negative while a champion is warming, you know exactly where to spend your next hour. It’s the difference between hoping and managing the deal.

Start With the Problem, Then Let the Data Inform the Playbook

Patrick’s career sits at the intersection of product and go-to-market, which shows up in how Pod was built. Before writing code, he spoke with around 100 AEs across industries to understand what actually makes complex selling hard. The biggest meta-lesson he keeps coming back to: spend more time defining the problem than you think you need.

Teams love shiny solutions, new tools, and new processes. But if you’re unclear on the problem statement and its value, you’re rolling dice.

That mindset extends to how teams can sell better today. Look at your historical wins and losses by segment, ACV, product, and region. Who typically shows up on winning buying committees at each stage? When does procurement enter on the deals you close versus the ones you lose? What concerns does finance raise on six-figure contracts in your industry?

Every deal is unique, but patterns emerge when you zoom out. Bringing those patterns to the point of action is where coaching pays off. Especially for new AEs stepping up from BDR roles who need to ramp into complex motions without years of tribal knowledge.

What’s Next for Pod

Pod is onboarding new customers and rolling out deeper integrations across CRMs and call recording platforms, so the coaching gets smarter with less manual lift. The throughline remains the same: give sellers an edge on execution inside messy, human, multi-threaded deals, so more of that expensive pipeline turns into revenue.

If your team is staring at a leaky bucket and you’re ready to move from more activity to better decisions, Pod’s worth a look. And if you’re already invested in a sales methodology, even better. This is how you get it off the shelf and into the conversation where it actually moves deals.