Is Google’s NotebookLM a secret CRM killer?

I’ve by no means labored in gross sales, at the very least not just about. The closest I’ve come — and it will date me — is working in retail on the mall as a young person, after which on the VHS/DVD rental retailer down the road from my childhood dwelling, so I’ve super respect for many who do it at a a lot greater stage than I ever did.

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

Because it seems, I might not be alone: Sam Lessin, former VP of product at Fb and present common 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 appliance 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 plenty of effort and time placing offers / and many others. into their CRMs and monitoring all of it in a structured manner… We by no means did that… for an entire host of causes, however largely laziness // price/worth…

however what we did do for the final decade is write one another a weekly electronic mail on the offers we have been severely, notes on fascinating conferences, portfolio corporations, and many others…. The issue is that whereas we had that historical past it was buried in electronic mail and actually fairly exhausting to do something with besides within the uncommon / odd scenario 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 all the ~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 electronic mail (from, date, topic, physique)

2. Add to NotebookLM: take all the electronic mail historical past and simply add it to Google’s NotebookLM.

3. Tada, I can now ask the ten years of electronic mail historical past protecting practically our whole funding historical past any query I need… and the solutions are SICK. It really works GREAT (and deep-links / references the whole lot 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 preserve will survive this paradigm shift. It issues a ton to have the recorded uncooked materials / the enter from people… however it ought to stream like dialog (textual content and voice)—after which the machines can handle the remaining…

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

aspect magic, I used to be truly actually properly stunned 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 impression of NotebookLM on the CRM market

Clearly, not all organizations will have the ability to follow-suit and will miss a few of the extra strong and highly effective options from CRM leaders comparable to Salesforce and Microsoft.

However even when just a few hundred or thousand customers do use NotebookLM, or comparable open supply AI instruments, instead of a CRM, it may spell hassle for the businesses providing them — at the very least with regards to the income being generated from this product strains.

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

In fact, 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 unbelievable ascent

NotebookLM has gained plenty of consideration lately as probably the most thrilling and well-received merchandise to return 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 offered, full with AI “hosts” and artificial voices that have interaction in easygoing, conversational banter with eerily humanlike qualities.

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

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

Certainly, NotebookLM Editorial Chief Steven Johnson reshared Lessin’s X publish at the moment 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”