Episode #299: 

Emil Reister, Chief AI Sales Officer at BCC Research, explains how AI is transforming modern sales leadership, buyer expectations, and team productivity. He discusses connected systems, AI-powered coaching, sales enablement, and the future of AI-driven customer engagement. He also explains why curiosity, experimentation, and human judgment remain essential as organizations adopt AI-first revenue strategies.

“What does AI say about your organization? More and more buyers are educating themselves and spending time on these tools. From a marketing standpoint and sales standpoint, it’s critical for organizations to really invest time in how they best position themselves within these tools.” – Emil Reister

In this episode, Emil Reister shares how AI is reshaping the priorities modern CROs and revenue leaders must meet to stay competitive. He explains how connected AI systems, automation, and buyer intelligence are transforming sales workflows, coaching, productivity, and customer engagement. Emil also discusses why curiosity, experimentation, and continuous learning are becoming essential leadership traits as organizations adapt to AI-driven business environments.

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[Transcript]

[00:00:05] Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the C-Suite Sales and Marketing Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host, and we have a very interesting conversation today with Emil Reister. Now, Emil, I have to say, part of what makes this really intriguing is not only that we’re going to be talking about how AI is redefining literally what it means to be a CRO or a Chief Sales Officer, right?

[00:00:27] Steve MacDonald: And even in your title, you are a Chief AI Sales Officer, and you do this for BCC Research, and I want to talk a little bit about that. You’ve got the traditional sales background. You’ve been in B2B sales forever. You know, you’ve put together turnaround cultures before, very focused on team orientation, solution selling.

[00:00:49] Steve MacDonald: But then you have adopted, in the world of AI, some strategies, I think, in how you approach sales and managing the team, and what it really means to overcome some of the biggest problems that we have as salespeople today, where our buyers, the B2B buyers, are waiting longer and longer to want to even talk to us, right?

[00:01:10] Steve MacDonald: They’re doing all of their research. They’re putting their day-one list together. And then, if we’re lucky enough to get on there, then they want to open up the conversation. So I’m just going to start with that. I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about your background and what you’re doing before we get started.

[00:01:28] Emil Reister: Absolutely. So, there is a story behind the title as well. So a big part of what I’ve done with BCC and what I was brought in to do is, we’re a market research organization, and so we’ve been in that space for 50 years. And, you know, as an industry, we’ve seen this shift from consuming PDF reports and 200 to 300-page PDF reports, which can be a little bit of a long read if you’re not a big reader.

[00:01:56] Emil Reister: I’m not a big reader myself. And so I was brought in to figure out, okay, how do we modernize a 50-year-old business? And I think a lot of organizations are trying to do that now, is how do I AI my business? And so, in a sense, that was my focus coming into BCC, is how do we use AI to enhance our sales and our marketing techniques and our platforms, but also our product, our end product that we’re delivering to our consumers, and so hence, Chief AI Sales Officer.

[00:02:25] Emil Reister: So it is an AI-first mindset to sales, is really where that title was born from as we designed it.

[00:02:31] Steve MacDonald: So I’ll start out right away, and I’ll just say that you had a philosophy about moving from a tool focus to a connected systems focus. And what does that mean?

[00:02:46] Emil Reister: Yes, a really great question. I think historically, and I’ve worked at companies where we have a tool for this, and we have a tool for that, and before you know it, you’re logging into 10 different websites on a daily basis. So all of these tools can do various pieces. And so I think what AI has enabled us to do in a lot of this is, how do we start to connect these disparate tools and systems?

[00:03:10] Emil Reister: You know, can I take conversational data and pair it with practical projects that I’m working on? And can I take my CRM data, and can I pull some of that in? And so I think maybe a word that comes to mind is context. If I can give my AI platform, I do a lot in Claude. It is probably quickly becoming my favorite platform to work in, depending on what we’re tackling.

[00:03:37] Emil Reister: But how do I now connect these pieces? And what I love about Claude is the ability to give it access, whether it’s direct access to a system or a process. So Claude has connectors, so we’re able to kind of go through the library. For example, if you work in Asana to manage tasks, you can pull that data in with a direct connection.

[00:03:58] Emil Reister: A lot of the big CRM systems now offer the ability to connect directly into your AI tool. And then, for the tools that we don’t have access to, how do I pull that information in? So, for example, with Claude, we have the ability to connect our Google Chrome browser, and I can literally give it permission to log in, for example, to a platform that doesn’t have a direct connection.

[00:04:25] Emil Reister: But maybe there’s a specific report that I need every week to kind of complete my picture for something that I work on. And so I can actually set that up as an agent that can then log in, and we give it permission, and we give it the credentials. And so it’ll actually just pull that up on my Chrome browser, log in, and grab that information.

[00:04:44] Emil Reister: Or we start thinking about maybe folders. So, for example, one of the tools that I love, that I use on a regular basis, I have a tool called Plaud. It’s a voice conversation tool, and it gathers phone calls and meetings and in-person meetings, and it creates transcripts. Most of you guys are familiar with these from Zoom meetings, but it does that for all of them.

[00:05:08] Emil Reister: And so I’m able to then download either the transcript or the recordings of those calls, and I can just stick it in a folder on my desktop, or in some cases, multiple folders on my desktop. But I’m able to now give my AI that access as well. And so now we’re beginning to piece together CRM data and, you know, day-to-day tools, day-to-day projects that I might be working on, and I’m able to tie in these conversations that I’m having.

[00:05:37] Emil Reister: And so it has a really complete picture and creates a ton of context to then be able to help me with whatever I’m working on, whether that’s a summary for the board or for leadership, or whether it’s a project that I’m working on. I’m currently partnering with a client on a pretty lengthy engagement, and we’ve probably had, oh, I don’t know, 10 or 12 calls so far, whether it’s discovery calls and scoping calls.

[00:06:01] Emil Reister: And so being able to put all that in a folder to say, “Okay, here’s the proposal we built for this. Here’s the conversations we had. Hey, listen, I need a one-pager. Can you spin that up for me?” By connecting all of those pieces, I’m now able to get a lot of benefit without buying another tool. It’s just putting them together, thinking about the architecture of what’s the world I live in, and is there a way for me to connect these pieces together so I can work smarter?

[00:06:28] Steve MacDonald: So take that to one level beyond in terms of, you know, the data we typically talk about. The world kind of thinks about it like structured and unstructured data. Structured data, like spreadsheets, rows, columns, numbers, things like that. Unstructured data, conversations like we’re having here.

[00:06:46] Steve MacDonald: How important is that in terms of learning across the entire sales team and across the company, really? Because not everybody was in those 10 to 12 conversations. Not everybody was in the room, right? And there are salespeople that weren’t involved in those conversations, but could really learn from those conversations and the questions that were being asked and how they were being answered.

[00:07:13] Steve MacDonald: And are you seeing, as kind of like the new CRO, is there a new way? Because sales training has always been the biggest thing, right? And it seems now like we have the ability to do sales training with AI in a totally different way, that every salesperson can literally tap into a knowledge base of conversations and data, structured and unstructured data, that allows them to be that trusted advisor, right?

[00:07:40] Steve MacDonald: That we, the Gartner, Forrester kind of, you know, you can’t be a salesperson. You’re solution selling, right? You know, you come in as somebody that gets them, gets their business, understands. Is this helping us be a solution provider, seller, trusted advisor, peer, colleague, however you want to say it?

[00:08:01] Steve MacDonald: Do we have the ability to be that more than we ever have before?

[00:08:05] Emil Reister: Absolutely. And again, this is where we’re probably going to come back to context a lot, but this is where that context comes in so much. And I think even as a salesperson, not that we all love our managers, sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t, but a great example of self-servicing here, for example, if you know your calls are being recorded in whatever system you work in, maybe you’ve launched a new product.

[00:08:30] Emil Reister: And instead of waiting for that feedback, if we’re proactive, I can go in there and say, “Hey, listen. Here’s 10 calls that I had. Go download them from your CRM or whatever system you’re in. Get those transcripts. Here’s the collateral that was given to us when we launched this product,” right? And we’re connecting those two data pieces.

[00:08:49] Emil Reister: “Here’s conversations I’ve had. Here’s the collateral that I have. Rate me on this. Here’s a scorecard. Here’s a five-question scorecard. I want to rank myself on this.” And then that follow-up to say, “Hey, how can I do better? What can I do better? Hey, I’ve been working on being really intentional with my wording for this.

[00:09:09] Emil Reister: Can you help give me some feedback?” Right? And so we’re beginning, again, it’s context, but it’s also that ability to self-serve in a big way. As a sales leader, on the flip side of that, you take these 10 or 12 conversations we’ve had in launching a product, and then maybe I’m getting ready to roll it out to my team.

[00:09:28] Emil Reister: I can take all of the collateral we’ve built. So I go to marketing and, “Hey, marketing, give me all the one-pagers we built. Give me all the collateral that we put together. Hey, give me that video that we did, the slide deck that we did.” Upload this, upload these 12 conversations, and then maybe I go to the tool and say, “Hey, we’re getting ready to roll this out to sales.

[00:09:48] Emil Reister: I’d love to anticipate 12 to 15 questions I might get from the sales team. Can you do a quick FAQ guide that I can now provide my sales team?” I didn’t have to think of the questions. I didn’t have to think of the answers. Now, I will say this, I’m a massive proponent of human in the loop. I don’t believe that we should let AI just run wild and do all of this for us.

[00:10:13] Emil Reister: It is an excellent tool to put these pieces together, but then I have to apply my human judgment to say, “Okay, did it interpret this correctly? Did it answer this correctly?” And 80, 90% of the time, the answer might be yes. But there’s still that element of, okay, now I’ve got to fine-tune it a little bit. But I just took what might have taken two or three hours and turned it into a 30-minute exercise.

[00:10:38] Emil Reister: And so I think that’s kind of where it really starts to come together.

[00:10:42] Steve MacDonald: So there’s a lot out there about how AI is creating more efficiencies. Two things that do not get talked about a lot. First is, what do we do with our time? As, you know, the head of the sales department, when your team is getting more and more efficient, how do you help them work with their time?

[00:11:04] Steve MacDonald: And how does AI help them be more proactive, right? And not just fill the space that we’ve had there. The second one, you can choose to answer these in any order, is the expectation of value that we are providing to our clients is dramatically changing. The amount of time it takes for us to deliver and the quality of what we deliver is changing, right?

[00:11:31] Steve MacDonald: And so the expectation of what you’re selling and how quickly, and the level of quality that they’re going to get, is changing at the same time. So I apologize, those are two very separate questions there. I just realized that, right? Proactivity and then perception of time and quality.

[00:11:51] Emil Reister: A couple of things that come to mind. So one, years and years and years ago, I had a sales coach tell me, “You need to focus on the things that only you can do.” So when we start thinking about, okay, I’m reclaiming some of this time, I just saved a ton of time, so now what do I do with it? You know, that’s the immediate thought that comes to mind.

[00:12:13] Emil Reister: So as I look at my week and as I look at my day, the 80/20 rule applies, right? Most of the time, we spend 80% of our time working on things that do not really matter, that do not really add a ton of value. There’s a lot of busy work. And so as I begin looking at systems and process and automations, that’s where I would encourage teams to really focus their time.

[00:12:37] Emil Reister: Can I architect a system that allows me to eliminate the busy work, eliminate the things that are not high payoff or high return? A great example of this, I have four agents kind of programmed in my world, and those four agents run typically on a Saturday morning because oftentimes I’ll pop up here to my office and spend a few minutes drinking my coffee and just kind of recapping the week.

[00:13:06] Emil Reister: And so one of those agents does a pipeline review. So it’s literally popping in the system. It’s looking at our naming convention. It’s looking at all the required fields that should be filled out when we create a deal in the system or an opportunity in the system. And all it’s doing is running through everything that was done that week, and then it returns a query that says, “Hey, out of the 10 deals we created, seven of them look great.

[00:13:29] Emil Reister: Three of them have an issue, and here’s what it is.” And so it’s easy for me to then just copy and paste that, send it to the two or three people that those deals belong to, and we can get those updated. We talked a little bit about self-servicing on call scoring, but as a sales leader, as a manager, one of the things, maybe some of you guys love this, but it’s not my favorite thing to do, is to sit down and say, “Okay, my team made 300 calls last week.”

[00:13:56] Emil Reister: I have to, you know, first sift through here and find which ones connected and then look at how long the call went to kind of decide, do I want to listen to it, and then download the recording and then listen to the call and then give them the feedback. And so one of my agents helps me do that. It actually goes through all of our calls.

[00:14:15] Emil Reister: I’ve programmed it to have some parameters for what we’re going to score and what we’re going to listen to. And so it’ll pull down that transcript, it’ll rank them on the call and then give me a summary. It gives me a summary of the call, it gives me a summary of the coaching it provides, and it gives me a link to the call. So if nothing else, I can literally, if I have five people on my team and I say I want three calls a week, it’s still going to give me those 15 calls.

[00:14:40] Emil Reister: I can listen to it. Or I might be able to look at the summary and say, “Okay, I kind of know what’s going on with this account, and this coaching does make sense.” The other thing it’ll do for me is it’ll pre-draft an email to the rep with specific feedback about that call. And so again, from a time standpoint, I’m saving a ton of time, but it does not eliminate the human in the loop.

[00:15:03] Emil Reister: It still has me in the loop to now go back and either review the calls or maybe tweak the feedback a little bit. And there are sometimes I look at the feedback and it’s not relevant, and I might choose not to send that to that particular person. But that’s time I can reinvest to now go work, what I’ve found is, on strategic projects.

[00:15:23] Emil Reister: Maybe there’s a new marketing initiative we’re kicking off, and so all this time that I spent doing something that was important, call ranking or pipeline reviews, as a manager, that’s part of my day-to-day job. That’s something I should do. But because I’ve saved all this time, I’ve got an hour I can now really hyper-focus on this new campaign we want to launch.

[00:15:44] Emil Reister: Or I’ll spend that time really looking at my other two deliverables from my agents. One is a marketing review, and one is a sales review. And so it’s literally going in, it’s going through all of my dashboards. It’s taking all of those data points, facts and figures, and compiling them, and then it’s tying it back to the pipeline.

[00:16:04] Emil Reister: And so we’re looking at things like meetings completed versus future steps created versus deals created, right? So we’re measuring, are we converting what we’re building? And then I ask three questions at the end of each of those reports. What’s working? What’s not working? And what should I focus on this week?

[00:16:24] Emil Reister: And so it gives me a bulleted list on all of this data that is available, and yes, I can spend a couple of hours and go through and digest all of it, or I can read the summary. I’m going to date myself a little bit, but it’s the CliffsNotes, right? It’s giving me the CliffsNotes of what’s going on in my sales and marketing funnel this week.

[00:16:42] Emil Reister: And then what I often find myself doing is saying, “Hey, I’d like to have a little more information on that. I want to dig a little bit deeper. Give me those 12 leads that came in from the AI referral source, and I want to see what happened.” Or, “Gosh, I did not realize that deal ended up being closed lost.”

[00:17:00] Emil Reister: Now I can go into the system. I can go kind of download and plug in a little bit more. So I think for me, what it’s done is it has made me more efficient, but it’s given me the right kind of time back. It’s given me that ability to really dig in and be focused with where I choose to invest my time. So high value, I guess, is kind of what comes to mind.

[00:17:22] Steve MacDonald: You know, I’m sure you’ve come into sales calls and that the buyer is more prepared, more knowledgeable than they’ve ever been before, right? It raises the bar. If your role is an educator, right? Your role is somebody that understands their industry, is going to bring in new perspectives that help them understand not only the problems they have, but how they can solve them.

[00:17:46] Steve MacDonald: The requirement for value that you’re going to deliver is increasing. At the same time, their expectation of the value that you’re going to provide on those calls is going to increase at the same time. So how do you deal with that as a leader of the sales department, knowing that the buyer’s more prepared, they’re smarter, we have to up our game at the same time if we’re going to transcend where they went by just going and doing some searches and getting prepared pretty quickly, right? How do you prepare for that as a sales manager, as a salesperson in your department?

[00:18:25] Emil Reister: I think that’s a really great point. Years ago, you would often say, “Well, have you Googled your company? And what does Google say about your company?” And that was, you know, where a lot of the thought went.

[00:18:36] Emil Reister: My answer to that question would be, what does AI say about your organization? So if somebody pops in your name or pops in your company’s name, does the AI tool really understand what you’re doing? AEO is becoming a key focus across a lot of organizations and AI referrals. You know, we’ve seen as we’ve launched a dedicated focus around AI at BCC Research, we’ve seen a big increase in AI referral traffic and AI referrals being driven to us.

[00:19:14] Emil Reister: So I think that is the immediate piece that comes to mind is, do we have a strong strategy around AI tools? What does Perplexity say about us? Is the information in there correct? I’m guilty of it. I did it just the other day. Somebody said, “Hey, here’s this really cool tool. I think it’ll help your team.”

[00:19:35] Emil Reister: And my first response was to go to Claude and put it in. Hey, you understand the context, back to that word context, you understand the context of my organization and what we do. This is a tool that was recommended to me. Give me some information on it. And what I found is, as a person that’s often approached by other organizations to sell us whatever the flavor of the day is, I might go a step further and say, “Well, what about their competitors?

[00:20:04] Emil Reister: Who are their big competitors? Hey, I really like this tool. Thank you for that. Give me some competitors.” And so again, I think more and more and more, the buyers are educating themselves. They are spending time in these tools. And so I think from a marketing standpoint and from a sales standpoint, it’s critical as an organization for us to really invest some of that time we get back with other savings in how do we best position our organization within these tools so that when someone searches our company, it shows up and it shows up correctly.

[00:20:40] Steve MacDonald: So what is your recommendation to other CSOs, CROs out there on how they need to adapt, how they need to train their departments differently? Like, this is a major shift and a major change, and I talk to a lot of CROs, and I talk to a lot of CMOs and CEOs, and they’re getting asked by the board, “What’s your AI strategy?”

[00:21:10] Steve MacDonald: Right? They all know they need to have it. The answer to what that question is, what’s your AI strategy, hasn’t really been cemented yet in a lot of organizations. You’re so steeped in this. If you were a CSO or a CRO and you’re thinking through, “What do I need to do? How do I need to adapt?

[00:21:31] Steve MacDonald: How do I need to be the CRO of the future that embraces AI?” What do we need to be thinking about? Like, how do we need to start thinking differently?

[00:21:40] Emil Reister: Really good question. I think part of it is, you know, I have a natural tendency to explore and be curious. So I think first and foremost, what I would say is you’re not as behind as you think you are.

[00:21:52] Emil Reister: I think for me, this light bulb went off 12, 18 months ago, right? There was this thing, and then it became more commonplace and, you know, ChatGPT. And so it’s easy to feel like maybe I’m way behind. These terms that are being thrown out, AEO and MCP and connectors and, you know, just the thought of creating an agent that does something for me is super intimidating.

[00:22:16] Emil Reister: Or I think I see a lot of companies kind of go the other side of that. I’ve seen a lot of organizations throw their people into AI, and they’re expected to use this, but we’re not really equipping them and giving them some tools. So I think first and foremost, what I would say is you’re probably not as far behind as you think you are.

[00:22:34] Emil Reister: It’s new. We’re all learning, and it is evolving so incredibly fast that this thing is, what we did six months ago looks vastly different today than it did six months ago. And so I would encourage you to find some newsletters, find some certification programs, find some podcasts that you might listen to.

[00:22:57] Emil Reister: Figure out how other people are using this. A lot of times for me, I’ll read an article on LinkedIn and go, “That’s a neat idea. I think I might want to try that.” Back to your earlier question, all that extra time that I have is now I want to go play with it. I want to see if we can build this, and I think we’re seeing more and more of that.

[00:23:17] Emil Reister: So I think that’s one piece in it. I think the second piece, something that we’ve done at our organization, is we’ve created an open format, almost like an office hours environment. It’s not required. You don’t have to attend. Mm-hmm. You can come if you want to. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.

[00:23:33] Emil Reister: But we do it on the first Wednesday of every month. And what we do in that format is we cover three things, internal AI tools, a learning element, and then an external use. And so what we’re trying to do with our teams is we’re creating a space where it’s, I think there’s a nervousness, “I’m gonna break something,” or, “If I connect this and it doesn’t work, then what’s gonna happen?”

[00:23:56] Emil Reister: And so there’s that fear of, “I’m not sure, so I’m just paralysis by analysis.” And what we’re trying to do in this environment is we’re trying to showcase, okay, internally, how are we utilizing AI for our benefit, for our company? And we’ve built some incredible tools around marketing and emails and graphics and videos, and how do we begin to put those pieces together?

[00:24:20] Emil Reister: And so we kinda educate our team internally, and a lot of it is show and tell. “Hey, here’s what I’ve learned.” You know, we did prompts last month, for example. And so we spent a lot of time around how to do a well-designed prompt to then get the results that I want. And, you know, today we did a topic on what’s a markdown file and how does that tie into all of these tools?

[00:24:42] Emil Reister: And so there’s that internal showcase, and there’s a little show and tell. And what I’ve seen is, as we’re doing that, now more and more of the team is starting to dream a little bit. They’re starting to think about their day-to-day. Mm-hmm. And the hope is that they’ll come to us and say, “Hey, I’ve got this task that I do regularly.

[00:25:01] Emil Reister: I actually think we can use AI for that. What do you think?” And so there’s that. There’s the education, because we do wanna equip our teams, and we wanna teach them, and we wanna help our workforce become more AI educated. And then the third element is external. How are we utilizing some of what we’ve learned to now go to market, whether that’s new products, whether that’s new services, maybe enhancements to the services we already offer?

[00:25:27] Emil Reister: So maybe a practical example that I’ll toss out is think about your typical proposal. Are we still just delivering the same old PDF proposal that we’ve used for the last 20 years? And did you know that there’s some really amazing tools that we can take that proposal and dump it into, and we can turn it into a clickable link with menus that open and graphics that show up and videos that play?

[00:25:52] Emil Reister: And with a little bit of training and coaching, what might sound like a multi-hour project to build is literally as simple as a couple of prompts, a couple of folders, and in five minutes or less, we now have a really robust proposal that we can put in front of that client that looks uber professional and looks like it took hours to build, but it really didn’t.

[00:26:14] Emil Reister: And so I think, I’m not sure if I answered your question, but those are some of the little tools and strategies we’ve used to help our teams become more comfortable in this world of AI and really start to dream and think about how they can use it to enhance what they’re already doing.

[00:26:30] Steve MacDonald: I got to tell you, this is gonna be one of my biggest takeaways from our conversation, is that just as a company embracing AI in terms of exploring together what we can do with it. So you’re literally embarking on a, let’s explore this new frontier, let’s push it, let’s see what we can do, let’s see how we can benefit, let’s play with it, let’s test it.

[00:26:55] Steve MacDonald: And what it does, as I was listening to you, I feel like it’s taking down that analysis paralysis, right? You know? And it’s creating a culture around exploring what AI can do and how it benefits. And then the second thing you said there was around different proposals and things like that, that’s an important part of the brand experience.

[00:27:18] Steve MacDonald: That’s a really important part of the customer experience of working with you, because every interaction promises what it’s gonna be like when I hire you, what are you people gonna be like, you know, on a day-to-day basis, and the level of quality and delivery that I’m gonna get, right? So I love that.

[00:27:39] Steve MacDonald: There’s not a point of interaction where we shouldn’t be rethinking how the experience of that interaction is helping to close that deal, helping to make that promise, helping to build that trust, right? I got to tell you, I wish we had another couple hours, but I’ve got one last question, and that is if there was one thing that you wanted people to take away from our conversation today, it can be a summary of something we’ve already talked about, it could be something brand new.

[00:28:08] Steve MacDonald: But nobody’s gonna keep a half an hour in their brain, right? But if you said, “Okay, for the C-suite executives that are consuming this podcast, here’s the thing I want you to take away most,” what would that be?

[00:28:22] Emil Reister: Yeah, we definitely could spend a ton of time on this. I think it’s probably the last piece that I touched on.

[00:28:28] Emil Reister: I think there’s a lot of anxiety in the workplace. Is AI coming for my job? You see this, right, on a daily basis. If you’re consuming content, this is a common theme question that we get across the board. And so I think the one thing that I would say is be genuinely curious about how we use this as a tool.

[00:28:50] Emil Reister: I have seen incredible transformation within these teams. I’ve seen our teams reskill and upskill in an incredible way. I think, you know, at the end of the day, the people that are gonna be replaced in the long run are genuinely gonna be those that just have no desire to learn, that ongoing curiosity.

[00:29:12] Emil Reister: And I think part of the reason I love AI so much is because it is evolving. But in today’s world, depending on what age bracket you fall into, I might say the YouTube culture, right? There’s this YouTube culture in certain age brackets where, “Well, I don’t know how to do it. I’ll just go look on YouTube.”

[00:29:29] Emil Reister: And I think what I love about AI is there’s a little bit of an instruction manual. There’s a little bit of a, hey, maybe if you don’t know anything about AI, sometimes I’ll take a complex issue, and I’ll just pop it in and say, “Hey, explain it to me like I’m a fifth grader.” And it literally will help you understand some of these concepts at a basic level, and then take that same curiosity and begin exploring and playing with it in your day-to-day, within your teams.

[00:29:59] Emil Reister: Really starting to create an open culture of, let’s learn together. Let’s explore together. This is a new frontier. Yes, there are people that’s been in the AI space for much longer than others, and they might be considered as a PhD in AI. But I think there’s so many tools and resources available for us that we can use to learn and get better, and be more comfortable pretty quickly on our own.

[00:30:26] Emil Reister: If you’re embarrassed to ask some of these questions, jot them down and go back later and figure it out. But there’s so much that we can do. And so I think that, to me, is probably the biggest piece, is that, you know, embark on it with an attitude of curiosity, embark on it with an attitude of experimentation, encourage your teams and your direct reports to do the same, and then create an environment where we can learn from each other.

[00:30:53] Emil Reister: Some of the best calls I have on a regular basis is me on the phone with somebody else on the team saying, “I got to show you what we just did.” And then what I often see is from that, we start with one idea. The proposal thing that I was talking about earlier, that was an idea, and then somebody else on the team says, “Well, hey, wait a minute.

[00:31:15] Emil Reister: We have this lookbook,” or, “We have this catalog. Can we use that technology to now do this?” And then somebody else on the team says, “Well, gosh, I was working on building that. Can you help me with the prompt? How can I take this spreadsheet and download this data to then incorporate it?” And it’s just this really cool experience where everything starts to mesh and work together.

[00:31:39] Emil Reister: And so I think that’s probably the biggest thing. If there was one thing that I would share, it’s that, you know, be genuinely curious and then create an environment for your teams to be genuinely curious. And then I love sitting back and just watching the magic happen. Watching people genuinely show up excited about something new they’ve learned, something new they’ve built, or some new initiative that they’ve come up with.

[00:32:02] Emil Reister: And out of that, I’ve seen us birth products that we can now go to market with and monetize. It really is, I said this on a post the other day, but it really is a fun and exciting time to be in sales and marketing. And I think that’s my takeaway from a genuine attitude of just curiosity.

[00:32:21] Steve MacDonald: Oh, I love it. You’ve inspired me. I’m probably gonna go and play on Claude a lot more than I normally would’ve today because it’s so true, right? Instead of being worried about, like, losing our jobs, what we should be doing is saying, “How do I embrace this? How do I allow it for me to do things better, do things I’ve never done before, support my team members in ways that I’ve never done before,” right?

[00:32:44] Steve MacDonald: And if that’s the attitude we have and we go in with that kind of curiosity and exploration, boy, those are the team members we all want, right? That’s who we should be. Thank you for that. It’s amazing. The whole mission of this podcast is to just share different perspectives, different people, we’re all B2B sales and marketing professionals, going through an ABM process. We talk to C-suite executives all over the world, and the goal is just to share ideas exactly like that, and inspire us to do, learn, and apply those differently to our businesses and help us all grow.

[00:33:21] Steve MacDonald: And if we do that, I call that the rising tide that lifts all boats. And you were an amazing part of that rising tide today. I just wanted to say thank you.

[00:33:29] Emil Reister: Well, thank you for having me, for coming on. It was an immense pleasure. I always enjoy, like I said, my attitude of curiosity and willingness to learn. So I love being a part of that process wherever I can, so I appreciate the invite.