Manage Smarter 228 ‑Kevin Maney: Using AI to Create and Sell New Business Categories

HOSTED BY C. LEE SMITH AND AUDREY STRONG
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Kevin Maney is a bestselling author, award-​winning columnist, and partner at Category Design Advisors (CDA). His critically-​acclaimed book, Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets, introduced business to the idea of category design and has sold more than 150,000 copies worldwide. 

As a founding partner of CDA, Maney has helped leadership teams at hundreds of companies all over the world focus their strategic thinking through category design. Maney has been a contributor to Newsweek, Fortune, The Atlantic, Fast Company, CNN and ABC News, among other media outlets. He was a contributing editor at Conde Nast Portfolio during its brief run from 2007 to 2009. For 22 years, Maney was a columnist, editor and reporter at USA Today.

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In this podcast for sales managers and sales leaders, Audrey, and Kevin discuss:

  • The role of artificial intelligence/​AI and how it can help define your category
  • Why AI is the new electricity of creating new categories of products and services
  • Concerns about AI and opportunities for growth
  • Class category design and how it defines what the new problem is that you are trying to solve
  • The hottest new business categories for future growth

"The #1 mistake managers make is they don't clearly define the problem that their product solves and why it matters to the target persona.”

Kevin Maney

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C. Lee Smith 

SalesFuel CEO and Founder Selling Power Leading Sales Consultant, Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst

C. Lee Smith is the CEO and Founder of SalesFuel - a firm he founded in 1989. He was named one of the world's Leading Sales Consultants by Selling Power magazine. Lee is the creator of the AdMall® and the TeamTrait™ SaaS platforms. He is also a Gitomer Certified Advisor, C‑Suite Network Advisor and Certified Behavioral Analyst.

Areas of Expertise: credibility, AI in sales, sales AI, market research, entrepreneurship, personal branding, hiring assessments, psychometric assessments, sales hiring, sales consulting 
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