This is the third episode of the “AI and Selling Effectiveness Podcast.” Every other week, the IEPS posts a new show with IEPS Selling Essentials Marketplace partner Zeev Wexler from Viacry.
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Today’s show featured three things sales organizations must be considering for AI in selling effectiveness from Expert in Digital Marketing, Blockchain & AI for Strategic Business & Revenue Growth Zeev Wexler, President of Viacry.
Find Zeev on LinkedIn.
ZEEV’S TIP: “Every company today needs an AI governance board — people inside the company who look at what’s good and bad, what’s possible and not, where the risks are low and where they’re high. Without it, it’s the Wild West—and that’s how you get hurt.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: This is another episode of the AI and Selling Effectiveness Podcast. It’s a sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. I’m here with my partner Zeev Wexler from Viacry. This is our third show. Eventually, we’re going to start bringing on leaders at companies, VPs of marketing, VPs of sales, VPs of AI, if there is that title, who are doing great things to help the companies’ selling process improve, be more effective, and help them achieve their goals.
In the first two episodes, we basically talked about how this is the Wild West of corporate and organizational AI on the selling side, is what we’re really focusing on. People who’ve been listening to the first two episodes have reached out to me and said, “You’re right.” A lot of sales professionals, especially the ones who are involved with the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, they’re at successful B2B companies and successful B2G, business to government, companies. To be successful at companies like that, you got to be smart, you got to be thinking, you got to be using tools.
A lot of sales professionals have started using the tools we’ve been talking about, ChatGPT, Claude, whatever it might be, Gemini, to do research, to draft an email, to draft a blog post, maybe a LinkedIn post. A lot of people are beginning to figure things out, and there’s a lot of information. That’s not something, although on the second episode of this show we went into your nine steps, your nine things to think about to become more proficient at AI in the selling process. I encourage people to go back and listen to that. But where we see a lot of companies struggle is at the organizational level. It’s kind of like when the internet became a thing 30 years ago. It was the Wild West. People were jumping up, they were creating sites, they were posting things that they probably shouldn’t have posted. They let people know sites that they were going to, that they probably shouldn’t have let people know where they were going to. It’s almost the same thing.
Organizations are coming to us and they’re saying, “Our people seem to be using it, but we got to get our arms around how to more effectively govern, how more effectively to have our hands on this.” Today we’re going to be talking about three things that organizations should be considering and doing to help utilize AI more effectively in the selling process. Good to see you again. Let’s get started. What do you have as our first bit of advice?
Zeev Wexler: There’s a huge difference between how you personally use an AI prompting, et cetera, tools to how an organization uses an AI. An organization first needs to establish a vision. Let’s talk sales. Put your sales on a whiteboard. Have a vision, have it all laid out. Then understand where AI can help and where AI should stay out of it. Where AI can save you time or extend the opportunities and where the salespeople need to shine. When you put it all on a map, on a whiteboard, now it’s much easier. You’ll be amazed how many companies, how many organizations have not done this yet, have not put it all visually to everybody, so every salesperson, every sales manager, every leader in the company understands exactly everything and where AI touches and where it doesn’t touch. That is crucial, and I think that’s our first step for today. What do you think about that?
Fred Diamond: It’s true. We’re doing today’s recording in June of 2025, the summer of 2025, summer just kicked in. Zeev, even a couple of months ago, people were saying to me, “Well, we’re going to have a wait-and-see type of approach. We’re going to wait and see yada, yada, yada.” Meanwhile, their salespeople were using AI all the time. You gave me a great bit of advice on the second show. When you see that long dash in a post, you know that it’s generated by ChatGPT. I personally use ChatGPT for some things, and I’ve been very conscious to delete those long dashes, because there’s a lot of people out there who are keeping their eyes open, is the sales professional being legit? Are they being authentic with me, or are they just copy and pasting something that ChatGPT said?
But now, here we are, June, it’s happened so quickly and sitting and waiting to see what’s going to happen, well, it’s already happened. Yes, tools are going to improve and audio and all these things are going to continue to improve. You got to give the team behind ChatGPT and Claude at AWS, all the props, man, they are improving things by the millisecond it seems. Even if you use some of the tools every day, you see things later on in the day that are improvements, and they’re constantly asking you, how did you like this response?
I got something from ChatGPT, which said, do you prefer number one or number two? It took me five times to read it and I saw that they added an icon, an emoji in, in option number two. It didn’t even occur to me the first five times. I think you’re right. I think companies now they need to get on top of this and they need to start issuing some corporate standards about how you utilize these technologies.
Zeev Wexler: Absolutely. You nailed a couple of things. First of all, the curse of the em dash. Guys, please remove those em dashes. It’s so clear that you’re using ChatGPT. But again, it’s not about how I personally use it. It’s about the regulations, the rules of the company. Every company needs to have rules of what AI does inside our ecosystem. Let’s take sales, because that’s what we’re talking about. There is a clear process, or it should be a clear process of sales. Then you can really establish where AI goes. I’ve said it, I think, in one of our earlier shows, but in today’s world with AI, mediocre is free. Nobody wants to be mediocre. You need to establish something, which I think brings us into step one that goes into step two. You need to have a governance board, or at least a leader.
You can call them the chief AI officer, you can give them whatever name you want, but I believe every company today, every single company needs an AI governance board. They need a board to understand, to talk about these things, what is good and what is bad, what is possible, what is not, where are the lowest risks and where are the highest risks? Each company today, designate a person, a team of people to be your AI governance board. You need to have inside the company, people that are looking at what are the rules and regulations, what other companies got burned, what other companies are doing well. You need to look, and like you said, it’s here, we’re about to enter Q3 of 2025. Time runs. You and I joked about it earlier, but we are about to go into Q3. Q3 and Q4, in my opinion, are the last chance for companies to take advantage of AI as a power tool.
Next year, you’ll have to just adjust to what everybody else is doing. Number one is have a clear vision. Number two is have a governance board. Have some leaders inside your company that light the way for everybody else, that tell everybody, this is okay, this is not okay. This is how we use AI. Company A, B, C uses AI this way. These are our rules, these are our regulations, and that is the only way to grow. Because if not, like you said, it’s the Wild, Wild West, and like I said, it’s mediocre, and nobody wants to be mediocre.
Fred Diamond: As you’re stating that, one of the challenges is companies have more information than ever about your company. Now with AI, you could just type in what’s happened today at American Express or Bank of America, whatever it might be, a prospect, and you’ll find things today that are pressing the company. It goes back to one of our clear notions that customers have access to more information than ever before about what you are trying to offer, what you’re trying to sell, so there’s almost no room for error. If you’re going to be utilizing some of these tools to communicate things, there’s got to be certain standards.
Like sometimes people will jump up on ChatGPT, or one of the other tools, and say, here’s some prompts. Create a post for me to post. Then what they’ll do is they’ll copy and then they’ll post it, without taking the last a hundred yards, which is what we all talk about, which is, well, you need to put it into your own words. You need to add some things to show that this isn’t AI speaking. This is you speaking. If it’s customer-facing or the customer is going to get access to it, that could be a slam against you and your company and the customer may decrease its confidence in what you are bringing to the market and your company.
Zeev Wexler: It goes even further. Other companies can use your own data against you, which I can’t name names, but two big, big companies are now working on feeding the ChatGPTs, Claudes, all kind of not factual things because their facts are out there. Now they want to dilute them by things that are not factual. If there was a governance board, and if there was ruling, this would be completely avoided. But when you have the vision, everybody knows the vision of what you use AI, you have a governance board, now you can create a knowledge base and rules. Now you can create a knowledge base that, hey, AI, you work out of these rules. You don’t take anything from the outside. You can check the outside, but everything needs to go through these rules. That can save so much heartache, loss of money, who knows, even some jail time at some points. But this is crucial because everybody feeds the AI things that they shouldn’t feed it, and that’s because there is no vision, and a lot of times, not a governance board that tells you what you can and cannot do. Like you brilliantly stated, it’s the Wild, Wild West, and in the Wild, Wild West, you can get hurt.
Fred Diamond: You can. We’re talking about three things that organizations should consider, must consider, Zeev, as they enter Q3, second half of the year, to continue to show that their company gets it, they’re on top of AI. It’s not about restraint. It’s about doing the right thing. It’s about understanding how we as a company are presenting ourselves to customers in the marketplace. I know you have a third idea. Give us a third idea to bring this home.
Zeev Wexler: The third idea is education. A company needs to invest in education. I’m not talking about general AI education, which is important, I’m talking about education of how we, company A, B, C, uses AI. I’m going to give you an analogy. AI right now is a road. We’re giving people Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Audis and Porsches, and we don’t give a speed limit. Accidents will happen. We got to draw the lanes, we got to give speed limits, we got to give rules. If not, we are just waiting for accidents to happen, because these tools can do so much, and sometimes they can do more than we can control. I can’t control a Lamborghini at 250 miles per hour. You need the regulation, and education really leads there.
Companies need to invest. You need to bring in people to educate. You need to have your own company’s ideas being educated into an AI, what should be done, what could be done, and what should never be done. There’s so much, and you have always been more diplomatic than me, it’s not a should. It’s a must. Companies can use AI to grow, or AI can bury you because your competitors are going to take away your customers. Companies need to understand that AI is the biggest change in our technology. It’s like me telling you about the internet and the smartphone way before it became what it is today, you would change the way your company moves. I’m sure Blockbuster would. Now, this is crucial. Invest in your people, educate them, educate them about AI in general, about AI in your company, about what AI can do and what AI should never do.
Now, this is all going to change, but according to now, you got to give the education. I’ve been to so many companies that truly leaders in those companies, everything that they know about AI is ChatGPT. Even on the ChatGPT side, it’s very, very minimal. It’s just, tell me this, do that. Give me a social media structure. It is a tip of the iceberg. Education is a must. Bring in people, do workshops, do masterclasses, give example projects. Have a competition inside your company of who can do what with AI in a secure way to understand. Some people are extremely talented with AI, and all you got to give them is some rules, regulations, some governance, and then education, and they can create literally a 5X.
I don’t know, Fred, how I would live my life without AI today. AI has become such a prevalent part of my life, everything I do has an AI touch to it. If somebody would take AI from me, I would be lost. Now, again, that doesn’t mean that that’s a good thing, but you need to use AI to do more things. AI is making us so much more capable. We can do so much more with our time. Now if you give a vision, governance, and education, you empower your company, you empower your people to create amazing things.
Fred Diamond: Those are three great things to think about on future episodes. We’re going to be talking about some offerings that we’re bringing. By the way, just to let people know, one of the things, Viacry is a member or participant in the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, what we call our Selling Essentials Marketplace. What we’ve done is we’ve become such a resource over the years for companies looking for AI and selling advice. LinkedIn support, assessments as they hire, training, presentation skills, if you will, that we have selected the best of breed companies to work with to help B2B and B2G, business to government, selling organizations be more effective in going to market with their selling organization.
We’re going to be talking about an offering that we’re actually making available now, but we’re going to officially launch it. It’s called the Eval Program, where we’re going to be working with companies to do an audit of what they’re doing to where they are in the AI for selling effectiveness pathway, if you will, that your team with all your expertise is going to operate.
Thanks again, Zeev Wexler. I’m excited for all the things that we’re talking about and the value that we’re bringing customers. We’ve already gotten a lot of great interaction from the first couple of episodes for the podcast. By the way, if you’re listening to this and your company is doing things that are exceptional in the selling part using AI, we have our AI for Selling Effectiveness Award. We’ve given out a couple of those already to Cvent and General Assembly. Reach out to us at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling and we’ll help you apply for that particular award. Zeev Wexler, it’s great seeing you, to all our listeners, thank you, and we’ll see you on the next episode.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo