#210 – Consalia Roundtable: 2026 So Far Part 1: How is AI impacting sales?

Full episode transcript: 

​Please note that transcription is done by AI and may contain errors.

 

 

Will: Hi, and welcome to the 210th Sales Transformation Podcast. Um, we tend to check in occasionally, usually at the start of the year, and, um, and halfway through. And I can't believe we're already at the halfway through Mark. Um, so this is, this episode really is about reflecting on, um, the year we've had to date and what our predictions are gonna be for the, the next half of the year.

Um, so I'm joined by, uh, Phil and Jesus. So Jesus is head of Consulting, Phil, um, CEO. I'm Will, I'm head of sales at Consalia. Um, so yeah, I'm gonna facilitate this discussion and, uh, and so let's, let's start things off. Perhaps we could start with Phil, how are you feeling about 2026 so far?

Phil: Well, I'm very disappointed England didn't make it to the World Cup final by bringing a bit of football into this.

Um, particularly as Jesus is celebrating winning with the Spanish team. Um,

Will: and he's wearing his kit as well

Phil: and he is wearing his Spanish, um, gear, I don't, yeah. Which is a very appropriate

Jesus: Yeah. You know, I don't, I dunno if I'll see again, so I need to enjoy it. Yeah.

Phil: Um, but no, I mean, right. This, there's moment I think as we go into the summer in inverted comm recess, um, it's a, is a good chance to pause and reflect on what's happened so far, and also to start to sort of catch one's breath and start to think about the next six months. So yeah, so I'm in that nice stage where you've got slightly, slightly more reflection time and uh, I quite enjoy the, the summer months for that.

Yeah.

Will: Interesting. And has this, how about you, I mean, I know you've been so insanely busy since, um, since Christmas time. If you were to reflect on 2026 so far, are there any kind of key highlights or reflections that you wanna share?

Jesus: Yeah, I think, I think last time we had this, um, this kind of session, we spoke about the rollercoaster, and I think the rollercoaster, uh, sometimes, uh, looks like it's gonna be getting calm, but then it comes back.

Yeah. So you see is, uh, an example is the, the war in the Middle East that, uh, look like calm and then we go again?

Will: Yeah.

Jesus: So I think this is a new normal. So I'm seeing, uh, we've been very busy, uh, making some, uh, helping some customers in, in sales and doing some, uh, turnaround transformations. So it, and it's tough times because, you know, uh, there is no much certainty on several things.

So, uh, doing, doing any change or any, any, it is, it is complicated. Uh, I think companies think twice. Sometimes they, they wait or delay their investments trying to see if, uh, the rollercoaster comes, but it is not calming. So I think only the, the brave are just, uh, you know, just, uh, starting and, and going ahead, even if the rollercoaster continues or, or going even more harder.

So, yeah, I think, I think, I think, uh, as, as Phil is saying, I think this moment is a very good moment to do, uh, a pause, um, to step back and reflect. Many people are working hard, intense, fight, fighting, and sometimes we don't prioritise the right thing, so we don't focus on the right things because of this urgency.

Everything looks urgent. Yeah. So that's, that's what I feel, that's what I feel. But I think it's, it's, it's, it's a good moment now for, for this kind of a reflective thinking, something that we use quite a lot. And I, I, I, I, I definitely think it's very important.

Will: I agree. I just wanna pick up on something Phil said that he, you know, he said, I think he used the, the word re recess or something like that because it is sort of a quiet time in the summer and I, I personally don't feel like it's quiet.

I don't feel like things calm down in August anymore. They used to, but it feels as busy as any other month these days. And, um, I think, uh, yeah, I think for us as a business, we've been, um, yeah, we've been very busy since the start of Christmas. Um, it doesn't show any signs of slowing down, but when you kind of reflect on, you know, things, the, the world in which we're operating now, I think you, you you alluded to that has a, um, you know, there is still uncertainty.

There's still wars happening in the, in the worlds that's affecting, you know, um, you know, just take what's happening in Iran and how, um, oil prices are fluctuating and how that's affecting growth and things like that. Um, and that kind of leads to this sort of cautionary tale that I think all businesses are kind of operating in.

Um, and that doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. Yeah,

Phil: yeah. It's interesting that, uh, that in spite of that, I think certain, you know, that there's certain parts of the market, in spite of all the concerns doing quite well. I mean, I know that recently some of the technology stocks have, have dropped, um, you know, some, some part influenced by what may be happening in China, you know, with some of the developments of, you know, some of their sort of new AI tools that are coming out.

Um, but, uh, um, it's, it's interesting to see, I mean, there, it, it's, um, yeah, it is volatile, but, but somehow, you know, business still soldiers on, you know, it still rumbles away even though there's lots of uncertainty. It hasn't maybe disrupted things as much as we perhaps had thought.

Jesus: Or not yet. Yeah,

Phil: maybe not yet.

I know because quite often what happens when you come back into September, they start to look at things like debt, interest payments and can the UU US economy afford to service them? I'm sure we're going to get some, some, some interesting news popping up and of course, close to home we've got, you know, Andy Burnham, you know, coming in as Prime Minister.

I guess the world is probably thinking, we're a bit of a joke here in the UK with a number of prime ministers we seem to have had in a short period of time. But of course that's going to be, you know, adding another layer in the UK economy at least of, you know what, I wonder what the future holds in terms of direction in the uk but you know, honestly the UK has got very, very limited levers.

It, it can, that the government could, can, can influence, um, in order to stimulate productivity and growth. So we're probably gonna be in the similar situation now as we have been for some years. So I wonder how long he'll stay in office for. We shall see.

Will: Well, I think, I think, you know, unlike Starmer, let's hope that Burnham sets out a growth agenda.

I feel like Starer never really had one, and that's probably leads to kind of decision paralysis for organisations because they don't, um, I dunno how supportive Stama was to business and to, you know, enable growth. So let's say Burnham has a vision on that note. But yeah, some of the, um, you know, let's, let's talk about, um, growth.

Let's talk about technology, how it's affecting sales, because I think one thing that we've experienced and what we can see as a growing trend is ai, it continues to be, is a, it's been a topical conversation for us, certainly over the last year. Um, but have you, have you noticed any kind of trends, any, um, differences from the first half of the year, how companies approach AI and how it affects salespeople and, you know, how how we using AI has this, maybe you've got some thoughts about that.

Jesus: Yeah, I think, I think so because, uh, now you hear more and more on clients that, uh, clients they are, they are interested either in educational or bespoke or consulting projects to introduce AI in some form. Um, I've been looking into some, uh, big telco players here in the UK that are starting to use AI and by use ai, meaning educate into AI using several kind of, you know, hackathons or, or things like that.

And, and, and, and, and trying to invest a lot on educating people on how to use ai. 'cause it's not just to get access to AI or throw a ChatGPT access. Yeah. You, you need to, you need to go with them. Some people will be more eager to learn and to apply into their jobs and some other will be still, let's say in in defence mode.

Yeah. And, um, so I, I see companies that without, as we say in Spanish, without building a cathedral, they are starting to invest on, uh, on, on ai, uh, and, and training and educate their personnel. Um, we've seen as well through one of our partners that there are other companies that go. Much further into the, into the development and the value chain by adopting cutting net's technology.

So, uh, instead of, uh, you know, there is like a, I mean, we see this like a pyramid more or less, right? So we have the base, which they're trying to train the, the sales professionals train on, on, on how to use chat, TPT, how to prompt, do an, uh, an intelligent prompt, you know, and, and, and, and prompts that they can repeat and start to use some agents or some, or, or, or create some agents that's like, that's like the basic layer, the top of the parameters where you find these solutions like aviso, which is an end-to-end, uh, revenue intelligence platform.

We've been partner with, by the way, last, last year, we've been, uh, doing a lot of stuff with them, and they're the, the most advanced technology in sales with ai. Yeah. But this is like the Ferri. Some organisations don't need the Ferrari, but at the same time, they need something that is more customised to their needs.

So there is a middle layer that, uh, normally is, is starting to grow now with, uh, some, uh, niche consultancies supporting that, uh, you know, AI development, uh, AI based development. But sometimes it's not just consultancies or niche consultancies are the proper hyperscalers, like open AI or anthropic.

They're investing amount of money, big amount of money on, on, on teams, supporting teams and, and, and projects to, to help their, their enterprise customers to adopt, you know, AI more, more, more, more, more, more, more quick. And the reason behind is that I think they've been focused on, on the consumer side, but now they, they are more or less in the war of the consumer side.

So we have a number of different iPad scalers offering different solutions that some of them are better for value video, et cetera. They are now attack the B2B sector massively. So, and, and, and we, you can see that they're investing on creating new, new business development teams and, and, you know, and, and, and consulting teams into, into the local countries.

So uk, Spain, Germany. So this is coming, and I believe it's coming to create this middle layer. So the, the thing is, is we need to understand when we talk to a customer, maybe too long on the answer will, but when we talk to a customer, we need to understand where they are, what they need, and what is the pace of adoption they're ready to, yeah.

Sometimes the customers are not ready to go to the top of the pyramid or even the middle. They have to start by the base. So

Will: Yeah.

Jesus: You know, it's, it's, it's a kind of a balance. Yeah.

Will: Yeah, but I mean, ai, we could speak for the entire hour just on the topic of AI and the multitude of levels. You can, um, you can view it in.

Um, Phil, I just just wanted to take your reflection on have you noticed how our clients are using AI and has it impacted how we deliver to our clients as well?

Phil: Well, let's take the last question first. I mean, we're certainly integrating AI with our training programmes now in a way that we are, are doing it much more proactively than maybe six months ago. And what's astonishing is to see how the models that we have, uh, using AI can generate incredible outputs.

Um, so that's on, uh, that, that, that's, that's been a, a real revelation not just to ask, but to the participants that may are taking place on, on the training programme. Um, it's actually kind of a, a real wow factor, you know, if you, if you ask, if you prompt in the right way, um, you know, it's, it, it is, it's unbelievable to see people's reaction to, to what it can do and the impact it can make on productivity and just a quality of the work that they do.

There's a great, um, variety of, of, um, ability generally within the groups with some who are just not using it very much at all. It's, it's, it's, it's not a way of, it's not ingrained into a way of working. It's, you know, it's something that they do occasionally. Um, but actually mixing the two together, you can often get that, um, sort of revelation or change, seeing how colleagues are using it.

So, um, we're seeing an incredible increase and I think it's gonna happen very quickly in the sales world when the people start to see quite how they can, I think from my point of view, um, I've begun to understand on the one hand how powerful the tools are, but on the other hand, how dangerous it is if the tools are used incorrectly or in the public domain.

Um, and it's very interesting to see some of the directives coming outta the eu, which are coming into play in the next, uh, week or so, which are around transparency. And it's, you know, you cannot, for example, in open chat, GPT ask it to produce an account plan on a strategic account. You just cannot do that.

It's too dangerous because once the information is out there in the public domain, it's in the public domain. And so the answer has got to be, um, sort of working with more ring-fenced AI environments, which I believe many corporates are now embracing because of this risk. and I, I think they call it shadow ai.

I think that's the term that's being used, is that you have AI as it's, uh, developed with your company and its systems. The shadow AI is what employees might be using outside of their systems, uh, with some of these open for formats. And that's going to become a real issue I think for companies as they, as they start to progress this year.

Um, so it's, it's interesting, you know, for example, we've been testing, uh, the use of our tools in an open environment against a closed environment where employees have access to chat, GBT, clause, Gemini, all of these sort of AI agents, but within a closed environment. Um, so we mapped the same prompts and same questions on a closed environment within an open environment.

And there's, there's no doubt that the open environment can produce much richer sources of content than the closed. Um, so, um, I think, uh, I think this is, uh, this is going to be a bit of a challenge moving forward because you're gonna be wanting, as an employee to get richer content, which you might be able to get in the open environment, but you've got company policies saying you must not use the open environment.

So I think this is going to be one of the, one of the huge, it's gonna be a huge topic as we move into the rest of the year. Jesus, perhaps I'm about, um, six months too late on this 'cause you are probably there before I was, but, but, um, you know, it has implications for, it has legal implications actually for suppliers.

Yeah, I

Jesus: think there are two topics to take into account here, right? One topic is when we want to do a, an account plan with public data on both sides, my company and competitors, so let's our potential client, et cetera. This is something you can do on an open chat GPT, because in any way you're using public data on all the sources.

The problem comes when we want to use private, confidential data to do a more tailored and more specific account plan. Uh, that's the problem, right? When you put that into an open chat, no,

Phil: hate this. I, of course, you could go to a public domain to get data, but when you start to look in account plan, you're doing white space analysis, you're doing stakeholder mapping, you're looking at the personalities of the people.

Just imagine, just imagine sort of you profiling, you know, different personally personality types of the accounts that you are, you know, the stakeholders you are selling to and it's out there in the public domain. You just cannot do that. So yes, there may be parts of an account plan, but I would say very limited parts of an account plan where you can use open source data, but the majority of the account plan simply cannot be there in the public domain.

And I would argue therefore, you cannot do an account plan at all in in chat GBT. A few questions, of course, you know, publicly available information on financial performance and you know, other stuff.

Jesus: Yeah. But you're talking about profiling. So if somebody's posting a link in and it's public, this is public information, I can do a report on public information.

Phil: Yes. You, whatever

Jesus: is in

Phil: the internet cannot produce the plan though you cannot produce the plan in an open, you can get information from a public domain, but your plan cannot be in a public domain. It has to be.

Jesus: Yeah, yeah.

Phil: You know, so, you know, I think that it's going to be very tempting with some of the tools that we have.

You know, for example, for students to use open source chat GBT to produce the account plan using our tools. It's very, it's very doable if you've got someone who's half good at prompting. Yeah.

Jesus: Mm-hmm.

Phil: So I think that we need to be very, um, careful in how we recommend our tools are being used in that, in this sort of AI world in which we're now operating.

Jesus: That's what I was, uh, explaining. Right. So there are two ways. One way is, so two directions. One direction is when I, where I take the information from to do an account plan, I can take information from the public domain

Phil: of

Jesus: course, and with information, I can go in my private space, which is still, there is an AI running into the private space in the private, you know, cloud system, et cetera.

So it's not public. And then produce my account plan. And that's store that's store in, in, in the, in the enterprise domain. But still, you can ask to go to the public domain for asking for information about anything that might be useful for the account plan. Yeah. But you are not, you're not posting, let's say it's not posting, right, but it's, you're not posting your account plan into the public domain because you're using the, the private one.

So you need to engineer that, that, but of course you need access to the public domain because otherwise your knowledge about the customer profiles, investments, et cetera, it's gonna be very, very limited if you just, uh, get information from your internet. No,

Phil: I'm not, I'm, I I accept that. I just talk about the account plan itself.

It cannot be

Jesus: like the outcome where you store the outcome is a different, is a different thing. Yeah. So you don't store you wish. I, I fully agree with you on that We shouldn't store, but

Phil: interesting

Jesus: in public domain,

Phil: even access to public domain with enterprise systems that have got Cloud, Gemini, and chat GBT are not able to source publicly available information to the same degree of quality as you could use with chat GBT and Gemini in a public environment.

We've tested it with a client who's doing is doing just that. Yeah, I, it is astonishing how misquoted some of the source references were from the public arena using Claude, using chat, bgt uh, chat, GBT in a, in a private enterprise environment, which had access to the public quoted information out there.

So there must be filters in the enterprise system when you've got a, an enterprise version of Claude or chat GBT that stop it getting the access to the quality information you could have if you source chat GBT separately. I've, you know,

Will: so that, that's on, that's on the, the company then to ensure that chat is up to date.

It

Phil: is. Yeah. It, it is, but it's a big challenge. It, it, it is, of course, I'm sure they're aware, um, because their employees are going to say, this is not giving me what, quite what I need.

Will: Um, I mean, I think it's so important that clients are aware of this because, um, because they won't remain competitive if they aren't able to use AI chat Claude Gemini in the way that it should be, you know, in the way that it, it can.

And so if, if it, if it simply isn't giving the right details or provides the right level of confidence for a sales professional to be, um, more proficient, then um, then they would, they won't use it, but someone else will use it. Yeah. Another, you know, another professional will use it as it's a source of competitive advantage.

Phil: Yeah, I know companies are really sort of trying to process all of this at the moment, and it's now on a recent workshop, for example, that we had, people weren't allowed to bring their own laptops and use laptops to create any chat GPT information, but they, they were allowed to use their personal phones.

Interesting. So anyway. Yeah.

Will: Yeah.

Phil: Um, I think there's gonna be a lot more, and the, and the legal side of this is, is also, you know, interesting. I think it's something that, that, that as a company, we, we need to spend a bit more time kind of reviewing what is the legal position. If we have clients, for example, who are EU based clients.

We've got to, we've got to recognise the EU laws being introduced, uh, in a few weeks time about transparency and quite how we can quote, you know, the usage of any tools that we have. But I'm sure I know

Will: the eu, Phil, you've mentioned the EU rules a couple of times, so I know that the EU AI Act is coming out into force in August, but what, what does that mean?

Phil: Jesus, you may know more about this than, uh, than than me. The area that I've looked at is been, looking at transparency and the way a AI is, is being, is being used and the importance of labelling.

Jesus: I think, I think, you know, I I'm not updated on the last, uh, one or two weeks, uh, on these matters that you mentioned. I mean, I think transparency is part of, uh, was part of the strategy for the regulation. Uh, I've been more focused on the, on, on, well, you know, when we, when we discuss with customers, they, they're all interested about, well, not all the models are the same.

So in Europe, there are some models like, uh, uh, Lama from meta meta, uh, let's say less desirable by enterprises for Yeah, for, for some reasons. Uh, and, and they're interested on the GDPR. They're interested on the, uh, EU AI act that is already in place. They're interested in understanding where the data is gonna be stored, what, what is the, the connections where the connections have to be between the system, the AI system, and, and the enterprise system.

And, uh, sometimes some of the companies have legacy systems, so there is an internal, say, development and budget that is required to really make things work. Yeah. So it's not, it's not as easy as to, as to plug into the, into the, into the system. Sometimes this plug is, is, is, is not as easy. Yeah. And it's also the, the other thing that I'm very worried about is of course, the cybersecurity because, you know, we are starting to, to, and I think that's a big, huge topic right now because, uh, as you say.

You are in between the, let's say, um, the public domain sources, et cetera, information. So you have a tool that is accessing that, but it's actually as well your internal, uh, confidential information to produce something. So cybersecurity's a big element, uh, on, on any AI deployment right now. Yeah.

Phil: I've now found the article 50 of the EU Act, it's coming in place on the 2nd of August.

Yeah. And it covers transparency obligations in four situations. One is when AI interacts directly with people. Yeah. When AI generates synthetic content, I'm quite interested in the word synthetic content. When AI is used for emotion recognition or biometric categorization, that's gonna have a major impact on organisations like Gong.

Yeah. Which is looking at emotional intelligence in conversation analytics. And then when AI creates DeepFakes or texts published or matters of public interest, and then it goes into rules for providers. Yeah. And rules for deployers. As well. So if you take the sales intelligence studio, take what we're doing with Aviso, for example.

Yeah. Um, and I'm sure, um, Aviso is compliant to EU regulation because I know that Alpha talks about it a lot, but, you know, be interesting. It's important for us to really understand it, about the importance of of of, of being transparent in the way information generates. Yeah. It

Jesus: comes very well with the, intellectual authenticity.

Yeah. That we

Phil: It does. It absolutely does. And it makes, uh, you know, it's quite interesting. The exceptions, um, are when there is the human element to leverage AI content. Yeah. Is that you don't necessarily need to then, you know, cite publicly this is the com you know, sort of AI generated, you can use the word AI assisted.

Yeah. But the legal application becomes much less. But you, it can't be a cursory skim according to the EU directive. You've got to have quality human assessment of the data. Um, and I guess, you know, organisations need to set up processes in case there's some sort of, uh, legal action taken as a consequence of any tool that you might have generated that has been generated by ai, um, that, uh, you know, leads to a problem that could be lead to lit litigation.

So you need to make sure organisations need to make sure that they have a, it's quite interesting. There are two words that are important. One is governance and the other is provenance. Yeah. So you need to know the provenance of where the information comes from. I think, I think we do this at Consalia, by the way.

You know, Eddie's very careful about citing provenance. Yeah. Even though it may be an AI assisted report that's been developed. And then governance are two themes that I think companies are going to need to get their heads around if they haven't done it already. Yeah.

Jesus: Yeah, I think it, it also connects with the IP, if you think about it because you mentioned

Phil: hundred percent.

Yeah. Mentioned it's so important. Yeah. It's, it's really

You know, you talk about enterprise, but you know, the SM e market don't have the sophisticated systems in place to, to manage it.

Jesus: So when you, when you spoke about the charge GPT and enterprise, it's true that, uh, the companies tend to limit their access to web, et cetera.

It's because of, uh, being concerned about how to use the data that is in the internet. Uh, and, and, and that is an IP thing. Yeah. So I think, I think to be honest, we are in, I see this and maybe it's very visionary, but I see this as an in an interim moment. Yeah. Because,

Phil: yeah, I agree. '

Jesus: cause when you think about the AI and you think about back in time in, in a very, in a very simple example, the calculators.

Yeah. So you, you had a calculator. Yeah. So you didn't have that. So we just made counts by, you know, a paper, a piece of paper, or I dunno if you remember, very, very old school, which is kind of ruler that you did. I

Phil: do remember these days. I don't think will, would remember,

Will: did you use an abacus?

Phil: Because predated me slightly

Will: system didn't,

Jesus: you know, the, the engineers, uh, when, uh, I mean like, uh, that now should be like 70, 80 years old, they used the, uh, a ruler that had a special thing, that type, that moved.

And they need very strong calculations, very difficult calculations. Then the calculator came in. Yeah. And then people may think, okay, he's like cheating. Yeah. Because you are not, uh, learning to do calculations. So AI is to another level, of course, because then you can produce video, you can produce avatars that, uh, look like, uh, the, the real person.

So that's where I think authenticity and, and intellectual properties is such important for companies.

Phil: Yeah. It is.

Jesus: But I think in my view now, we are looking into, you know, with the support of AI kind of tech to emails or things like that. Yeah. I think this is like an thing in the future everyone will be using as normal.

Uh, the only thing is that you have to get accountable for whatever you're producing, to have the right ip, the right, you know, intellectual authenticity after that. Uh, and, and, and, and, and it's your work. Yeah. So,

Phil: yeah.

Jesus: Yeah.

Will: I think, uh, I mean, I don't wanna talk too much about the legality of things, but, but what, what's going through my mind is how on earth are organisations, meant to or the legal practise meant to keep up with the pace of change that AI is implementing?

Jesus: They don't, I tell you, they

don't. They don't

Will: at the moment. It just seems like they're so far behind. And so how, yeah.

Jesus: How, how can company is like always like, uh, the more, one of the most prudent, you know, or cautious areas in, in the company. And yeah, sometimes the adoption is not as fast as needed. I think it depends on the profile of the company.

They are company that have, uh, very low risk, uh, you know, uh, appetite and some others will be more keen to, to more risky environments. Yeah. And we've seen that, uh, with various cases, but, uh, but at the end it is, it has to be a balance between the risk you want to take and, and how the market trends and the competition is doing.

Yeah.

Phil: Mm-hmm. But Jesus, you can, you can see a, i, I guess the concern of enterprises with the, um, kind of the big Avis project that we've just got the pilot for, you know, with the large corporate and it, I mean, oh, it, it sat within the legal department for a long time, didn't it? Yeah. And, and I know that, um, perhaps, um, you know, US clients wouldn't have gone through the same process as the EU client, or maybe it could be the culture of the company, I'm not sure.

But, um, certainly it seems that the EU and you know, is much more cautious about trying to deal with some of these, uh, legal issues. Will that

Jesus: you've talked about. Yeah. I think the EU normally and historically has been much more powerful in terms of regulation, to be honest.

Phil: Yeah. '

Jesus: cause and you can see a, a sample with the ai.

So we have an EU AI act Yeah. That works all around the European Union. You don't find the same thing in the us Every state has a different regulation. Yeah, yeah. And, and you see that some states are much more advanced than others said, said this, um, once we say this. So I see that probably US is more used to innovate, so they are more.

Yeah. More keen to take risk, I would say, rather than the big organisations in, in Europe because of these strong, big regulators that we have across Europe. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's not just the company DNA, which if it's technology or it's an old manufacturing company that has been working for two, two centuries maybe, and, uh, their systems come from, uh, four, four decades ago.

Yeah. Things like that. We find that, so probably the, the adoption of AI is, it's not just the technology, it's also the people. It's not used to this kind of high tech, high tech environment. But then you see other companies that are more in the technology space, like, you know, laptop manufacturers or, or consumer electronics, that they are more into the technology.

So the adoption will be much, much faster. Yeah. Because it's more close to them, more natural. So I think it's a combination between the industry where you are in, you know, the, the, the close you are to technology and, and your, um, regulatory framework. If it's in Europe or it's in, in the us, that will, will give the balance of the pace of, of, of your adoption.

Phil: Yeah,

Jesus: makes sense.

Will: I mean, it's such a meaty subject, this one, because even you, even the EU by regulating or, or, um, a passing laws for AI regulation, if it's not aligned with China or if it's not aligned with America, well, America and China are just gonna be developing tools and solutions at a much faster pace than eu, but they run, going back to,

Phil: oh, sorry to interrupt, but they run the risk of, of, of legal, uh, fines in the, I

Will: I just, I I sort of think that AI is here, AI is here to stay, and it is, yeah.

You know, it is, uh, we're entering into this new era and, and we need to be very competitive. And I think the, well, I feel, I don't, I'm not, I'm not sure if, uh, the states and, uh, China, you know, w would be too concerned about being fined by the eu. Uh,

Phil: they would, if it was a $2 billion fine because of, you know, the way AI has been misused in a certain, in a certain way.

And we are seeing some very big finds coming outta the eu. Um, I think meta is a good example of that.

Jesus: beyond the fine Phil, I think we are a market of what, 300, 350 million users of Google, Android, et cetera. I think the fear they may have is that, but I, to be honest, I don't think this will happen, right?

Because it's too many countries, too many different internal regulations. But the fear that they should have at some point if they just, uh, stretch too much is that the EU reorganises itself and creates something for eu like another us, right? If, uh, Germany, France, uk, Spain, Italy joined forces, really joined forces as a Europeans and, and create a, a, a ch PT of Europe.

But that's not happening. We have Australian France that has been powered by, by France, but you know, it's, we will never be able to compete with them unless we join forces. And the problem is that there is so many politics and so many history of so many countries in Europe that I don't see this happening in the short, medium time over long, to be honest.

So they, they, they, they, the fines will come and they change things to not, uh, disappoint, uh, users. I think the AI is a business, but there is a much bigger business, which is, you know, the Google accounts, the Apple devices, et cetera. So we are talking about Terra millions or whatever you're gonna call it, right?

It's not billions. It's much more than that. So, um. But definitely it's, yeah, definitely it's, yeah, the fines help. But for instance, uh, the fines are helping to some companies in Europe not to like, to go with LAMA in meta, but go with Gemini, not because Gemini and, and, and, and clo, not because they are compliant is because they've said they will be compliant and they're working on it.

Lama didn't say that. Yeah. So finally they will do it because it's like the clouds and all the stuff at the beginning cloud was all in us and companies started to say it has to be stored in Europe. So then they opened Fu and they opened Ireland and they opened all places in Europe. Yeah. So this is coming.

But anyway, I think it's a, it's a globalised world and Europe unfortunately is difficult that, uh, place like another giant itself because we are quite fragmented.

Phil: Well, we've taken rather a lot of time on this, haven't we? Will so conscious of

Will: It's been interesting. I mean we've, yeah, we've covered a lot about the AI topic and how we see this evolving landscape and how it's affected, um, all of us, how, how business operate, how salespeople operate. Um, I think we've covered what we think potentially might impact, uh, US for the second half, um, of the year.

I think AI is, you know, is an evolving landscape and it's only going to, um, improve, I hope, the productivity and efficiency of how we operate. But yeah, to your point, I think we need to be very, uh, and organisations need to be very cautious around how they leverage ai in particular. Phil, you've raised that point around the, um, developing account plans.

Um, I know that we were gonna go through some reflections, so in terms of Consalia, um, but I'm just conscious that perhaps that's a, perhaps we need to save that conversation for the next episode, um, because there's a lot of, um, there's been a lot that we've done, um, in the last half of the year and we've only got 10 minutes to cover it.

What do you think?

Phil: Um, I think it may be worth Yeah. Another session rather than to, uh, cover it on this one. Yeah.

Will: Because we, you know, we've got, we've had various programmes graduated. Um, we've, you know, we've got a, a huge amount happening on the business school we've not even spoken about that has us.

We've not really spoken about consulting. Um, we've not, we've, we've not spoken about, um, a lot of the things that we've been delivering to new clients around, uh, you know, the bespoke training. So I think, I think there's an awful lot we can, we can discuss for, for a next episode. But, um,

Phil: what we could do is we could continue if you have time, and then George can cut this in half.

Yeah. So rather than find another time in our diaries, but you may be busy at, you know, at 11 minutes.

Will: Yeah. I'd rather, I'd rather save that for another episode, to be honest. Phil, would you,

Phil: okay.

Will: Yeah. Um, yeah.

Phil: Okay.

Will: So I think, um, perhaps we can, I mean, I, I don't really know how to wrap up this conversation. I think,

Phil: I think, um,

Will: I mean we've focused a lot about ai, um, the effects on, um, yeah.

Organisations at a fairly holistic level.

Phil: But I, I, yes, I think yes, at a fairly holistic level, but I think the, the. Maybe, maybe it's just, you know, sort of my observations and, and it's not a reflection of where other people might be at, but I feel as though we're entering, like Jesus mentioned earlier, I think in the, in the conversation is sort of we're in this sort of interim period, you know, use the example of the ruler and the calculator and, and so on.

And I think that I feel as though I'm, I'm a bit in that process, you know, as a, as a, as a, as a business, uh, person, uh, sort of. But I think beginning now to understand with much more clarity, um, the pluses and minuses of ai, I suppose that, you know, as a force for good, a force for productivity on the one hand, but, uh, can see some of the risk associated, uh, with misuse of AI or particularly around transparency.

And I think that that, that sort of message, uh, I mean it may be just sitting in my head at the moment, but I think the EU directive has suddenly made it more clearer for me that we need, we need, it needs to be top of mind, I think as we move forward into the next six months. And therefore we need to make sure in the business school with our students that they're also aware of some of the risks associated, you know, with using ai, they need to understand the ethical responsibility perhaps, and the legal responsibility around it.

It's, it's content that could be formalised into our programmes, and I'm sure our academy team is, is going to be doing that if they haven't done it already.

Jesus: Yeah, I think, I think from my end, I think it's, uh, more critical now to understand what is the purpose of the use of ai. So many people like, start with, uh, the tool itself.

Okay. Before the tool, think about why you are thinking about to use ai, what are the use cases, what are the benefits? And there has to be benefits that you can measure in from the very first week, from the very first month. Yeah. Because you cannot allow an investment of six months, 12 months, and then see if it happens or not, because you're gonna be investing a lot, not just in the technology, but also in the people transformation.

Phil: Yeah.

Jesus: And I think also it's about how serious you want to be, because some people is like throwing, throwing tools and doing like a very small training, as we say, in all our education we have, you know, certain interventions like the PLN sets and coaching sessions that follow up after the main event, let's call it.

Yeah. And then it ensures that it's not just landed, but stays with them. All this education we've been given, we've been delivering. It's the same thing on, on the ai. We need to get some, the, the, it is not just adoption, it's on the, also the, the fact that they are using and growing themselves from the grounds where they, they've been given.

So I think all these things start to be very important. Of course, I take the point on, on, on Phil, the, uh, privacy and uh, and, and IP and, and intellectual authenticity is extremely important. But that's the reason why I always say, you know, we have to have the human in the loop always doesn't matter. You have, uh, where you are in the pyramid, you're in the base, in the middle of app.

You have to start at the beginning and think about the purpose. Think about what you want to design, how you want to use for, what are the benefits you expect, measure these, these benefits. And then once you get the return from the ai, you have to apply critical thinking. So I believe that now in this AI super technology era, the, the sales mindsets and the mindsets we are working on are even much more important than before.

That's my view.

Phil: Yeah. They, yeah. Yeah. Can't stop thinking about intellectual authenticity as being the counter to, uh, ai.

Jesus: It's so if you have a budget, it's better to balance the budget in a way that maybe you don't invest so much in the technology, but invest much more in the humans because the combination of both things will be better, right?

If you have a super, super software, but you don't invest on humans, so they will not adopt.

Phil: Yeah. Yeah.

Jesus: So, so that's the reason why I think it's, it has to encompass properly, uh, the two walls of the human and the machine. And I believe the human makes even much more relevant than before. With ai, much more important.

I don't know if all the organisations are realising it, but we, we see it. We, we've, we've realised very quickly and we seen in some of our clients already,

Phil: yeah.

Okay,

Will: great. Well, I think that's a good note to, to, to wrap up. Phil, thank you very much. It's been really interesting, your, your point of view and Jesus thank you as well.

Jesus: He's catching up fast, I should say. We, we need to be careful. Will, we need to just, uh,

Will: I know

Jesus: he's catching up fast on ai, so

Will: Yeah,

Jesus: it's good.

Phil: Thank you for that.

Jesus: But AI is not always, uh, true, eh, they were predicting, predicting Argentina and was not Argentina, was Spain.

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