Representing General Assembly at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling’s AI for Sales Excellence Awards

Last week in Washington, D.C., I had the honor of being on the Sales Game Changers Podcast stage and accepting the Institute for Effective Professional Selling’s (formerly IES) first-ever AI for Sales Excellence Award on behalf of General Assembly.

And I have to tell you, this one meant something special.

Not because it was shiny (it was very shiny).
Not because it was an AI award (and you know I love all things AI training).
But because this award recognizes something deeper… something our industry needs more than hype, jargon, or yet another “state of AI in sales” webinar.

It recognizes doing the work.

Origin Story: Before Our AI Academy Was a Program… It Was Our Own Training

Before we built AI Academy for Sales, we went through the training ourselves.

We were our own pilot group: testing prompts, stress-testing workflows, building repeatable use cases, and figuring out how to strip away the noise and get to what really mattered:

👉 More time with customers.
👉 More listening, less administrative drag.
👉 More problem-solving, fewer “Time Suck Yuck” tasks (yes, that’s the official term now).

Sales professionals don’t wake up excited to update CRM fields, manually prep call notes, or dig through old decks for messaging. They want to solve problems, create impact, and build relationships.

So that’s exactly what we designed our program to enable.

Inside the Episode: Making AI Practical, Not Theoretical

On the Sales Game Changers Podcast, Gretchen Jacobi and I joined host Fred Diamond, alongside the incomparable Zeev Wexler, who sponsored the award, to talk about the very real, very un-glamorous day-to-day shifts that make AI stick in sales orgs.

A few of the themes we discussed:

1. The early AI adopter wins the sale.

“If the early bird gets the worm, the early AI adopter gets the sale.”
Because in a world of buyer noise, the reps who show up faster, more prepared, and more relevant… win.

2. Start small—then scale.

As Gretchen wisely said, start with one low-risk task.
Something uncontroversial, like:

• Prepping discovery calls
• Summarizing account history
• Drafting follow-ups
• Updating CRM
• Researching accounts and personas

The wins compound shockingly fast.

3. AI isn’t replacing sellers—it’s releasing them.

Freeing them from low-value administrative work so they can focus on high-value human connection.

At the IEPS event, every awardee said some version of the same thing:
Sales is (and always will be) a relationship business.
AI just gives you the time back to be better at it.

GA’s Three-Tier AI Academy: Teaching Sellers to Sell in the AI Era

One of the reasons we were honored with this award is the structure and practicality of our three-tier AI Academy for Sales, which gives sellers:

🔹 Tier 1 — AI-Enabled Tools

Foundations: prompts, workflows, research, summaries, CRM hygiene, call prep.

🔹 Tier 2 — AI-Augmented Automation

Templates, reusable workflows, sequencing, process improvement, sales ops support.

🔹 Tier 3 — AI-Superpowered Strategy

Predictive forecasting, multi-touch analysis, personalization at scale, revenue insights.

It’s tactical. It’s applicable.
And we use it internally.
Every day.
Because transformation only works when it’s lived, not laminated.

The Award Moment: Why It Mattered

Standing on that stage in D.C., listening to the stories of the other honorees, a unifying theme kept coming up:

Sales excellence is about partnership, problem-solving, and humanity.

The quiet superpower of AI in sales isn’t the automation itself.
It’s what teams choose to do with the time they get back.

More time strategizing.
More time connecting.
More time being the trusted advisors buyers actually want.

That’s what makes AI worth implementing, not just talking about.

The Question I’ll Leave You With

We ask this inside our training, and I’ll ask it here too:

What’s one sales task you’d love to automate with AI so you can get back to the part of the job you actually love?

And if you missed the episode, you can:
🎧 Listen or read the transcript here → https://www.salesgamechangerspodcast.com/generalassembly/

Huge thanks again to Fred Diamond, Zeev Wexler, and everyone at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling for recognizing the work we’re doing at General Assembly to help sales teams thrive in the AI era.

Here’s to less Time Suck Yuck and more time doing what humans do best. ✨

Pretty much everything about me as an executive is covered in this show

Ep127: Courageous Leadership: Take Risks 4 Massive Wins w/ Jourdan Hathaway | LinkedIn. Watch my episode of The Executive Appeal Podcast with Alex D. Tremble (CEO of GPS Leadership Solutions & KeynoteSpeaker). He’s awesome BTW and instrumental in my career. Discover how taking calculated risks can lead to significant victories for your family, team, and organization, and learn how to navigate setbacks with a growth mindset.

Here’s what we cover:

• Alex D. Tremble gives me the most hype intro ever – I’ll be putting his VO over music and use it as my own walk out music each morning to get in the zone.
• We discuss what I think it takes to be a good leader – not platitudes, the real stuff.
• He asks me about my deal with de-dabbling – it’s my jam.
• We get into the decision points of taking on a new role at a new company and having the courage to get out of your comfort zone – all about knowing where you’re trying to go and if your next decision gets you closer to that or not.
• We delve into the liberation of knowing your career risk tolerance – yep, it’s a big bold move and it’s possible it might not work out – but figure out the risk of the worst-case scenario and see if you can live with that. If you can…. GOOOOO
• Then a brief chat on what happens when you bet on yourself and why you need to.
• Alex then gives me a zinger of a question that lots of executives like me struggle with – if you came from poverty and a difficult childhood and become self-made through grit and resilience (aka, the path I took made me strong as hell), how do you then deal with the new life you’ve built for your kids? Also, how do be super ambitious and be a good parent? Woof – I don’t know. I’m winging it every day on that front 😊
• Next, one of my favorite topics of all time – Project FLAT. I’ve written extensively on that, and you can find it on my profile. It’s my real-life professional development plan that took me from a VP of Marketing to an SVP of Operations (and now I’m a CMO). I’m obsessed with owning your own professional development and share what that looks for me.
• I wrap with final thoughts on being bold, courageous and supporting others who are trying to do the damn thing.

Thanks for having me on the show GPS Leadership Solutions! Thanks also to the Exceptional Women Alliance that I’m proud to be a part of.

LinkedIn is an incredible place – I’ll share some thoughts to help harness it and some tips to avoid 🛑.

You can listen to the full episode on Josh Braun’s Inside Selling podcast here.

After recently announcing my new 🔥 role as General Assembly‘s new Chief Marketing Officer (which I’m absolutely 💕 loving BTW), I started receiving hundreds of LinkedIn messages like this: “Hi, I saw yesterday you joined GA as the new CMO. Congrats. Can I schedule a demo of our product next week so our team can tell you what we do for marketers?” One person asked what my💰budget was (yikes 😱). Definitely an important❓question during the sales cycle, but not an opening one of a ❄ cold outreach the day someone gets hired. On the other hand, there were so many thoughtful outreaches filled with great info, industry insights, support, and a genuine desire to build relationships. What a treasure trove of opportunity!

The First 90 Days Vs. The Long Game

I wanted to share some insight into what the first 9️⃣ 0️⃣ days typically 👀 looks like for a new CMO. LinkedIn is an incredible place so I’ll share some thoughts to help you harness it.

I’ll be back to reveal some of the 📨 outreaches I found very valuable 😁 that did or will lead to 📞 meetings, 🤝 connections, and yes…even… ✔ sales (at some point, just not day 1). PS – So many of you of you are 🏋crushing it out there! I’m so appreciative of the connections, learning, networking, and support that LinkedIn creates.

Before I do that, here’s what on my mind:

The first few days, weeks, and even months 📆 are not typically when a new CMO is ready to take a cold call for a demo of a product that may or may not solve a problem that may or may not be there that may or may not be prioritized this year. Instead, they are:

• Working their way through the list of activities below (keep reading, it’s at the end)
• Getting acclimated to the business
• Understanding their CEO’s vision
• Learning about the needs of their customers
• Building great internal relationships (the key to success for any org)
• Forging meaningful connections with existing partners

Natural Synergies, Existing Relationships, and Critical Priorities Take Precedence

For all your Sales Farmers out there, there’s some good news because a newbie is probably going to look to an existing relationship to see if they can solve a particular gap in the early days (don’t come in too hot on day 1). They are also going to look for natural synergies across the existing landscape to find quick wins. They are likely walking into their team having a laundry list of in-flight critical projects and will want to get dialed in to the expertise of their teams and getting those efforts across the goal line.

Documenting Capability Gaps and Solidifying Solution Requirements Before a Demo is Best

Long before anyone is ready for a product demo, a few things need to be true: business and marketing goals need to be created, a strategic plan crystalized, a set of real problems/blockers identified, collective agreement on prioritization established, and for the spots where a new product/service is needed – a set of business and functional requirements created cross-departmentally should be solidified.

First 90 Days Activities: Consider How To Tailor Your Outreach With This in Mind

If you are about to reach out to a new CMO in LinkedIn, here’s what they are likely focused on – consider how you can tailor your outreach knowing this is what’s on their plate:

• Meeting Stakeholders & Building Relationships at Every Level
• Learning the Operating Models
• Understanding The 1-3 year Business Vision, and FY Priorities
• Diving into Financials & Revenue Drivers
• Digesting Documentation Galore
• Scoping Out the Competitive Landscape
• Obsessing Over Customer Insights
• Learning The Other Departments (winning as a business means there’s strong connectivity, trust, and reciprocal value generation between departments)
• Marketing Performance Audit
• Budget Reviews and Reporting Familiarization
• Technology Stack Review and Training
• Goal Setting & Strategic Planning
• Team Alignment, Empowerment & Having Some Fun (ask me about our recent pet photo contest)
• Campaign Launches Review
• Performance Metrics Digestion
• Establishing Feedback Loops and Figuring Out How To Best Navigate The Org –(i.e, who to go to for things and how to quickly build reciprocal, productive relationships at every level)
• Vendor Assessments Including End User Assessments (is the thing doing the thing intended?)

Keep At It – Eventually Luck & Intentionality Lead to Something

LinkedIn, mentorships, networking, conferences, or any conduits of building relationships may yield the connections needed for two people to swap their expertise down the road. You’ll never know when the timing lines up, but I find it’s typically a worthwhile pursuit with the right approach.