Former trash truck salesman and tech entrepreneur David Berg created CommanderAI to revolutionize sales in the waste management industry. Designed to automate and streamline the painstaking sales process, the platform uses AI to generate prospecting lists, craft personalized outreach, and provide actionable insights, saving users time and reducing operating costs by up to 75%.

Tech guru and former trash truck salesman David Berg has come to know the waste industry well. What most struck him as he pounded the pavement looking for business was there was no software uniquely built to drive sales for this sector with its own nuances and needs.

He found himself falling back on the old-fashioned route: making scores of phone calls, knocking out slews of emails, and showing up at companies’ doors, hoping someone would let him in.

“Once you're in and they're receptive to listening, it's a fairly easy close. But the whole process to get to that point is painstaking,” Berg says.

That's where the technology of his startup company CommanderAI comes in. Commander was designed to eliminate the chase; improve engagement with potential customers; and automate the whole sales process.

The AI-driven platform starts out by helping to build prospecting lists. It identifies companies and their decision makers; retrieves those decision makers’ email addresses; and automatically drafts the emails, which go out directly from the user’s address.

Waste companies learn of potential merger or acquisition opportunities. They find sustainability-bent businesses in search of providers that run decarbonized fleets or do onsite composting. Waste pros find operations looking to launch electronics collections or whatever else they sell.

Commander learns from, and makes suggestions based on, data it pulls from companies’ websites, social and business media feeds, and industry publications. It tells users where prospects are based, what services they provide, and advises on customer segments to target. 

Built off the feedback of hauling companies, the software generates prompts in a language and tone that sound like a waste hauler.

“The conversation may start out, ‘Hey Joe, how many trucks do you have in the yard?’ Rather than ‘It's an absolute pleasure to meet you. I look forward to connecting.’  That's not how people talk in this space,” says Berg.

Customers get about a 3 percent response rate to emails or LinkedIn messages, which Berg says is three times the average.  He chalks these metrics up to the software’s ability to “talk” like a hauler.

“This industry is about hard labor. It's people out driving trucks and working with physical equipment. The informal language resonates,” he says.

Commander stays in the conversation beyond the initial outreach, more or less co-piloting as users feed in prompts like “be more aggressive” or “be less aggressive.” The AI understands.

While the interactive “waste-speak” communication seems to be a draw, perhaps the main sell is the data—it was the inspiration for building the platform.

“In waste management, robust centralized data sources are lacking.  That makes it hard to get a full picture, whereas in just about every other industry that does $100 billion or more in revenue a year, you can find multiple tools and resources. So, we aggregated all that data, pulled it into one platform, and converted it into what we call actionable intelligence,” says Berg.

Aside from tapping into the software to ferret out new business, companies use it to organize existing customer lists; book meetings; take notes; and generate sales activity reports showing outcomes.

They track all kinds of details along the sales cycle. That could be understanding where the lead is. Are the jobs quoted? Have they closed yet? Once they've been closed, is there an opportunity for more business? 

Based on customer feedback, CommanderAI asserts that it saves salespeople about 10 hours a week in research and in prospecting. And companies, on average, save 75 percent in operating costs, according to Berg.

“That’s because instead of hiring more salespeople to grow their efforts they use Commander [for $14,000 a year] to achieve the same results,” he says.

Selling waste services is a full-time job with plenty of pain points, confers Gary Altunyan, founder of Easy Waste Management, who uses CommanderAI and is now an advisor to the tech developer.

In his experience, when making volumes of outbound sales calls every day, it’s easy for conversations to blur together. Outbound sales emails present their own challenges—manual follow-ups can slip through the cracks, and it’s difficult to keep track of every lead while staying on top of other tasks.

AI not only helps with the day to day, but in the long run will facilitate growth, Altunyan believes.

“AI will enable waste businesses to scale rapidly without having to increase their workforce proportionally to keep up with increasing job expectations. The combination of targeted outreach, automated follow-ups, and data-driven insights will allow them to grow revenue while maintaining or reducing their customer acquisition costs,” he says.

Their adopters say platforms like CommanderAI facilitate predictable sales cycles, a better customer experience, and improved profitability. But for newcomers to the technology, the concept may sound scary, especially in the waste industry.

“We have done things so hands on for so many years. But I believe the way to look at AI is it is best used in parallel with humans. It's not going to replace employees. What it will do is make your top performers even more efficient. And it will make clear who those top performers are,” says Berg.

A problem for salespeople, he says, is the long hours they have to spend not selling, whether it's importing lists, researching companies, or sending out emails.  

“We're basically bringing selling back to sales, so people can stay busy making and closing deals.”