23. Nick Casale, VP of Sales at AirOps - How to Win With Your GEO Strategy

AirOps sales chief says AI search rewards full commitment

AirOps sells content engineering, software that keeps brands visible as search moves to AI engines, and Casale's case for the category is that the shift is real but not a Google-killer. ChatGPT reached in two years the daily active users Google took fourteen to reach, yet Google is not going anywhere and search will not become a monopoly. The bet, then, is on a race across many surfaces that rewards brands willing to invest in it early.

Takeaways

• AI search rewards full commitment. AirOps's business shifted from roughly 90% SEO and 10% AEO toward AEO over about a year. Casale says AI search optimisation is hard to get right, and 80% of the investment compounds into brand and customer acquisition, so half-assing it is worse than skipping it.
• Software is no longer a moat. Differentiation has to come from distribution and experience, Casale says. He points to the iPhone box as a memorable touch that stays with people without costing much, and cites Skip Miller, who barked at reps for talking about their own product.
• In-person selling closes at triple the rate. AirOps is all in on in-person selling, which Casale says closes deals at three times the rate of remote. Tusa adds that visiting a prospect's office lets you see the team and understand their targets, which a half-hour call cannot.
• Feedback loops now run weekly. Casale used to tell first-time leaders to pick one initiative a quarter. Now even monthly is a stretch, because feedback loops need to run weekly. He tests talk tracks across a week of calls with Acronym and uses Claude to keep track of things.
• Cold calling and gifting are back. Casale says sales tactics are cyclical. Sendoso's early play of sending cookies or cupcakes to an office got response rates of 50% or higher, and gifting now leans on thought leadership content and AI personalisation. Scraping and blasting has diminishing returns.
• Hire on attitude and aptitude. Casale likes hiring SDRs out of college and asks candidates to convince him to love something they care about, which surfaced a bird-watching candidate, Gianna, who was hired and is doing well.

What Casale expects next

• Account executives who get on a call and do a feature dump will lose their jobs within five years.
• Sales will become more consultative, Palantir-style, because buyers want to talk about themselves and hear stories about companies like them.
• Google is not going anywhere and the next phase of search will not be a monopoly.
• ChatGPT ads is already a billion-dollar run-rate business, and ChatGPT reached in two years the daily users Google took fourteen years to reach, so search will reward good behaviour across many surfaces.