Is Google’s NotebookLM a secret CRM killer?

I’ve by no means labored in gross sales, no less than not nearly. The closest I’ve come — and it will date me — is working in retail on the mall as a youngster, after which on the VHS/DVD rental retailer down the road from my childhood dwelling, so I’ve large respect for individuals who do it at a a lot increased degree than I ever did.

However on account of my short-lived gross sales expertise, I’ve by no means been a daily person of a buyer relationship administration (CRM) software program program like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Creatio. And candidly, all the CRMs I’ve ever seen different individuals use have felt like overkill to me — what do you want moreover a contacts listing or e-mail inbox?

Because it seems, I will not be alone: Sam Lessin, former VP of product at Fb and present basic associate at Gradual Ventures, this morning posted a message on the social community X with a screenshot detailing an instance of how his VC agency is utilizing Google’s AI software NotebookLM instead of a CRM, and discovering it to be extremely efficient. The applying permits for customers to ask questions by way of textual content and generate artificial podcasts from information sources they provide.

Lessin’s screenshot is reproduced and the textual content as effectively beneath.

Brief the structured CRM corporations (cough $CRM, cough)

NotebookLM and the way forward for AI Structureless CRM — WOW.

Here’s a private expertise re: the way forward for CRM…

Most enterprise capital corporations spend numerous effort and time placing offers / and so on. into their CRMs and monitoring all of it in a structured manner… We by no means did that… for a complete host of causes, however largely laziness // price/worth…

however what we did do for the final decade is write one another a weekly e-mail on the offers we have been taking a look at critically, notes on fascinating conferences, portfolio corporations, and so on…. The issue is that whereas we had that historical past it was buried in e-mail and actually fairly onerous to do something with besides within the uncommon / odd state of affairs the place it was price digging up actual historical past.

Enter NotebookLM — here’s a magical expertise for you that illustrates how LLMs actually do change the sport for a way individuals work…

1. Dump 10 years of emails: I simply took the whole ~10 years of historical past of those emails and exported them as a *.mbox file … after which extracted from that .mbox the important thing bits of every e-mail (from, date, topic, physique)

2. Add to NotebookLM: take the whole e-mail historical past and simply add it to Google’s NotebookLM.

3. Tada, I can now ask the ten years of e-mail historical past overlaying almost our total funding historical past any query I would like… and the solutions are SICK. It really works GREAT (and deep-links / references every thing within the historical past the place wanted.

SO WHAT

I simply don’t see how any structured CRM product that requires work to replace and keep will survive this paradigm shift. It issues a ton to have the recorded uncooked materials / the enter from people… nevertheless it ought to circulation like dialog (textual content and voice)—after which the machines can deal with the remaining…

Human guide enter into structured fields is DONE — as are the numerous SaaS platforms designed to do / velocity simply that — and that begins with CRMs

facet magic, I used to be truly actually properly shocked that the place I’ve written these scripts myself traditionally, chatGPT simply abstracted the entire thing… add the file, inform it what to do, get the stripped textual content again (not rocket science however cool!)

Gaming out the affect of NotebookLM on the CRM market

Clearly, not all organizations will be capable of follow-suit and should miss a few of the extra sturdy and highly effective options from CRM leaders corresponding to Salesforce and Microsoft.

However even when a couple of hundred or thousand customers do use NotebookLM, or related open supply AI instruments, instead of a CRM, it might spell hassle for the businesses providing them — no less than with regards to the income being generated from this product traces.

Certainly, as for proper now, NotebookLM entry is free with a free Google person account. With enterprises spending an common of 12% of their income on info know-how (which embrace software program subscriptions), the temptation to change to extra reasonably priced or free options — even when much less totally featured — could also be fairly tempting for big for IT decision-makers.

After all, with CRM suppliers racing to supply new AI-enabled updates, brokers, and instruments, it’s extremely seemingly most will attempt to supply their very own analogous variations of NotebookLM sooner fairly than later.

NotebookLM’s unimaginable ascent

NotebookLM has gained a number of consideration lately as probably the most thrilling and well-received merchandise to come back from Google’s AI efforts, particularly its “Audio Outputs” characteristic, which permit customers to add paperwork or URLs, even movies, to NotebookLM’s creation area on the internet — notebooklm.google.com — and generates a customized podcast based mostly on the sources supplied, full with AI “hosts” and artificial voices that interact in easygoing, conversational banter with eerily humanlike qualities.

The product, powered by Google’s Gemini household of huge language fashions, has climbed to hundreds of thousands of customers and greater than 80,000 organizations, in line with a put up on X earlier this month.

Final week, Google introduced it was engaged on an enterprise-specific model of the applying, NotebookLM Enterprise, to launch later this 12 months.

Certainly, NotebookLM Editorial Chief Steven Johnson reshared Lessin’s X put up immediately on utilizing NotebookLM as a CRM, remarking: “Such a great way to use the product. If this sounds like it could be helpful in your firm, stay tuned for NotebookLM Business https://notebooklm.google/business”