Episode Summary
Jennifer Knecht, Chief Revenue Officer at Western States Lodging, explains how emotional intelligence strengthens B2B revenue performance. She explores how awareness, trust, transparency, and meaningful connections influence buyer decisions. Jennifer also shares how AI can help sales teams understand different perspectives, strengthen human relationships, and reach the emotional level behind buying decisions faster.
Q&A Video
Introduction
Final Takeaway
Episode Q&A Videos
5:04 | Emotional Intelligence Training Turns Sales Behaviors Into Growth
“Our sales leaders who were highly aware of themselves, highly aware of how they were presenting, how they needed to adjust, who their audience was, and they were making intentional adjustments in the sales process to align with that other individual, they were being very successful.”
1:35 | Relationship-Based Selling Turns Buyer Trust Into Revenue Opportunity
“We all know it's a relationship-based sport, selling. We're creating a relationship. People like to do business with those that they know, like, and trust.”
4:02 | AI Helps Sales Teams Build Meaningful Buyer Connections Faster
“AI is simply there as a tool that helps us more quickly create a meaningful connection. We're leveraging technology so that humans, people in our sales process, can do what only we believe sales leaders who are excellent and human can do, which is build a trusting and meaningful relationship, and just get us there faster.”
3:40 | AI Support Builds More Meaningful Customer Connections
“We're working on training our sales team using AI to quickly identify what might be meaningful for our customers, get underneath the layers of business, all the layers of logic, into the emotional level, and more quickly connect with them on an emotional level like a human connection.”
3:10 | How AI Tools Strengthen Sales Performance and Adoption
“The digital teammate is my personal success advisor who's helping me just have more meaningful conversations. As we're seeing sales leaders start to see the progression happen faster, their nervousness around using it is starting to dissipate. Overall, the consistency is starting to create better momentum.”
4:39 | Emotional Intelligence Unlocks More Valuable Buyer Conversations
“Once we have transparency in a relationship, we can actually have a meaningful discussion. That transparency is really difficult to teach, but AI is helping us. It's just helping us help the sales leader to swiftly identify those different perspectives, look at it from different ways, and step into their customer’s shoes.”
2:17 | Champion Enablement Helps Complex B2B Deals Close Faster
“We're really working on retraining connection skills and knocking down any of those barriers so they're not even a point in the sales process, and then getting our champion skilled enough to be able to present it in the way in which it's going to get across the finish line.”
2:35 | Reaching Buyer Emotion Faster Strengthens Revenue Growth
“We may not at all be aligned because just that one word is setting us both on different paths. If you can get underneath the words to the emotion, sky's the limit. You’ve got to get to the emotion.”
Key Takeaways
Emotional Intelligence Drives Decisions
Emotional intelligence helps sellers uncover the deeper motivations and emotions influencing complex buyer decisions.
AI Strengthens Human Selling
AI helps sales teams understand different perspectives faster while improving preparation, relevance, and human connection.
Buyer Relationships Accelerate Growth
Strong buyer relationships and empowered internal champions help complex B2B opportunities move faster.
About Jennifer
Jennifer Knecht
Jennifer S. Knecht is Chief Revenue Officer at Western States Lodging, where she leads the strategies and teams responsible for driving sustainable growth. With a foundation in sales leadership, she focuses on helping organizations scale without sacrificing meaningful customer relationships. Her approach combines emotional intelligence, trust-building, and AI-enabled coaching to strengthen how sales teams connect with customers, develop internal champions, and create long-term business value.
From the Guest
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Full Episode Article
Title: "The CRO's Guide to How Emotional Intelligence Leads Revenue Growth"
This article is based on an interview with Jennifer Knecht, Chief Revenue Officer at Western States Lodging
Introduction
B2B revenue leaders spend enormous amounts of time measuring pipelines, conversion rates, sales activity, and close ratios. Yet some of the most important factors influencing whether a deal moves forward are much harder to capture on a dashboard. Buyers must trust the people they are working with, understand the value being offered, and feel confident enough to advocate for a decision internally.
Jennifer Knecht, Chief Revenue Officer at Western States Lodging, has spent much of her career studying the psychology behind these decisions. Her experience points to emotional intelligence as a practical revenue capability that helps sales teams build stronger buyer relationships, equip internal champions, and deliver more consistent performance.
Turn Emotional Intelligence Into a Measurable Sales Capability
Jennifer’s focus on emotional intelligence began with a familiar revenue problem. Her team believed it was doing the right things, yet some opportunities still were not reaching the finish line. Rather than examining only what was going wrong, the organization studied what its strongest performers were doing successfully. Jennifer explained, “Our sales leaders who were highly aware of themselves, highly aware of how they were presenting, how they needed to adjust, who their audience was, and they were making intentional adjustments in the sales process to align with that other individual, they were being very successful.”
The analysis revealed several attributes that distinguished successful sellers, including awareness, confidence, buyer understanding, and the ability to establish trust. These were not replacements for conventional sales metrics. They became another layer of the sales process that leaders could intentionally develop. Jennifer said that when the organization began training sellers around these capabilities, “we started seeing a pretty dramatic change.” For CROs, the lesson is important. Relationship skills do not have to remain vague personal qualities. Leaders can identify the behaviors of successful sellers, train them, reinforce them, and examine their impact on opportunity progression.
Use AI to Strengthen Human Connection Instead of Replacing It
AI creates the greatest revenue value when it helps sellers understand buyers more effectively, not when it removes people from the relationship. Jennifer’s organization approaches AI through the goal of creating meaningful connections. The technology helps sellers analyze situations from perspectives they may not naturally consider, recognize potential biases, and prepare for conversations based on a broader understanding of the decision-maker.
Jennifer explained, “AI is simply a tool that helps us create meaningful connections more quickly.” The distinction matters because sellers inevitably approach situations through their own experiences and assumptions. AI can introduce additional perspectives before an important buyer interaction and help sellers consider how another person might interpret the conversation.
Western States Lodging is also using personalized digital teammates that work alongside sales leaders. Rather than offering generic recommendations, the system learns from the seller’s language, thinking, and feedback. Jennifer described the goal clearly. “We’re leveraging technology so that humans, people in our sales process, can do what only we believe sales leaders who are excellent and humans can do, which is build a trusting and meaningful relationship, and just get us there faster.”
That approach connects AI investment directly to sales effectiveness. Instead of measuring success simply by how much content AI produces or how many tasks it automates, revenue leaders can examine whether technology improves preparation, buyer understanding, opportunity progression, and seller consistency.
Create Transparency and Equip Champions to Move Deals Forward
Complex B2B opportunities rarely depend on a single conversation or stakeholder. Sellers often need an internal champion who can represent the solution when the seller is no longer in the room. That requires understanding not only the buyer’s business requirements but also the personal and emotional factors influencing the people involved.
Jennifer sees transparency as one of the most valuable outcomes of emotional intelligence. “Once we have transparency in a relationship, we can actually have a meaningful discussion.” That transparency can expose concerns, stakeholder dynamics, and other information buyers might otherwise keep beneath the surface. Sellers can then respond to what actually matters rather than relying on assumptions.
The next step is helping champions navigate their own organizations. Jennifer explained that sales teams need to equip champions to understand the different perspectives around the table and communicate a solution’s value accordingly. “You’ve got to arm them so they’re the best salesperson.” This changes sales enablement from simply giving a champion presentation materials to preparing that person to navigate a complex internal buying process.
Conclusion
Emotional intelligence does not eliminate the need for rigorous pipeline management, account planning, or measurable sales processes. It strengthens them by helping sellers understand the human decisions behind those metrics. When sales teams get better at identifying what matters to buyers, building trust, and creating transparency, they gain information that can improve how they manage opportunities.
Jennifer’s central principle captures the commercial value. “Revenue is driven by the exchange of value. The faster you can get to the emotional level, the faster you can get to a true, solid decision that sticks.”
For revenue leaders, the opportunity is to make these capabilities repeatable across the organization rather than leaving them to a few naturally gifted sellers. Study what top performers do differently. Train teams to recognize buyer perspectives and emotional signals. Use AI to reinforce those skills at scale. Then measure whether opportunities progress more consistently.
Technology can make sales organizations faster and more informed. The sustainable advantage comes from using that technology to make the human relationship more valuable.
ELEVATING CONTENT MARKETING STANDARDS RAISES A CRUCIAL QUESTION:
Why shouldn’t the very act of creating thought leadership content also spark new conversations with in-pipeline deals, top prospects, and high-priority customers for revenue expansion? Or serve as the cornerstone for learning and applying voice-of-customer strategies? That’s the power of ABM Podcasting—engaging B2B buyers and customers in meaningful conversations that uncover essential go-to-market insights, support long sales cycles, reinforce your market perspective, build peer-level trust, and dismantle objections that kill deals.
Steven MacDonald
Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.
Steven MacDonald
Steven MacDonald is the founder of Content Strategies, CEO of a MarTech SaaS Company, fractional CMO consulting with leading B2B companies and former Director of Strategy and Client Service at top ten digital marketing agencies.
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