Agenda

Fireside Chat: Do You Have the Right Sales Talent to Execute Your Strategy?

Understanding the capabilities of your sales team isn't just a good idea—it's essential for achieving your strategic sales goals.

In this fireside chat, Michelle Richardson, VP of Sales Performance Research at The Brooks Group, will discuss best practices for assessing sales talent and training and developing your current sales team.

Topics will include how to:

• Identify and prioritize the sales skill gaps that impact sales performance the most
• Evaluate if you have the right people in the right roles
• Pinpoint development opportunities so you can tailor training and coaching initiatives
• Effectively hire, onboard, and retain top sales talent

Moderator: Gerhard Gschwandtner, Founder and CEO, Selling Power
Speaker: Michelle Richardson, VP of Sales Performance Research, The Brooks Group

The Modern Sales Enablement Stack: Practice with AI, Perform with AI

Sales performance in the current era is about building reps who can learn, adapt, and execute faster than the competition. Today's winning teams operate with a new kind of enablement stack: they practice with AI to develop skills faster and perform with AI to execute smarter. But most organizations are only doing one side of this equation and leaving massive performance gains untapped.

This session gives sales enablement leaders a practical and actionable framework to balance the training-side benefits of AI with the productivity-side benefits of AI Literacy, supported with case studies from teams already seeing breakthrough results.

Speaker: William Rintz, Global Program Director, UMU

Fireside Chat: The Integrated Leader: Balancing Power with Purpose

In this keynote, Satyen explores how modern leaders must fuse high-performance business acumen with deeper self-awareness and purpose. He bridges Eastern wisdom traditions with Western leadership models to show how impactful leaders get results and cultivate sustainable culture.

Why it matters:

• Helps organizations build leaders who are resilient, visionary and values-driven.
• Moves beyond the "command-and-control" leadership model toward one rooted in influence and emotional intelligence.

Moderator: Gerhard Gschwandtner, Founder and CEO, Selling Power
Speaker: Satyen Raja, Founder and CEO, WarriorSage

Trust: The Last Unautomated Advantage in Business

In an AI-saturated world, attention is cheap and trust is priceless. In this session, DeepTrust AI founder Nathan Kievman reveals how “trust as a currency” can be measured, strengthened, and scaled across modern sales organizations. Learn how DeepTrust's Trust Enablement Platform turns hidden relationships into qualified referrals, shortens deal cycles, and protects your brand in an automated era. Discover practical steps to transform your network into a compounding trust asset. Visit mydeeptrust.ai to explore the future of trust-driven growth.

Speaker: Nathan Kievman, President and Founder, DeepTrust AI

What AI Can't Replace: The Human Skills Still Winning Deals

Most sales organizations are flying blind when it comes to skills development.

They pick training topics based on gut feel, run the same program for everyone, and rely on self-assessments that measure confidence more than competence.

The result? Expensive programs with no clear link to win rates.

But a new generation of sales leaders is asking harder questions: Which specific skills move deals forward? And how do we know who has them?

In this provocative session, Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer at Corporate Visions, introduces a groundbreaking, evidence-based approach to measuring and developing sales talent: Precision Skills Intelligence.

Built on buyer evidence from more than 150,000 B2B deals, you'll discover the eight buyer-observed competencies that predict wins and losses—and how AI-powered, performance-based simulations now make it possible to assess and coach those skills with scientific precision.

In this session, you'll learn how to:

• Pinpoint the skills that predict sales success using buyer-validated data, not opinion or intuition
• Replace subjective self-assessments with objective skill validation, powered by AI-driven, performance-based simulations
• Build personalized learning paths and coaching programs that eliminate "plausible deniability" and directly improve win rates

If you've ever wondered whether your sales training makes an impact, join this session and discover an evidence-backed way to prove it.

Speaker: Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer, Corporate Visions

How to Use AI and Assessments to Drive Sales Skills Development

Real sales skill development goes beyond teaching features, benefits and sales process—it's about connecting what drives each individual with how they make critical decisions in real-world situations.

Discover how a salesperson's personal motivators and situational judgement tests (assessments that present realistic sales challenges and ask for the most effective response) reveal skill gaps and create a roadmap for optimized learning paths. You'll also see how this data can feed a unique AI agent for impactful one-on-one coaching.

This session delivers actionable strategies for instructional design and coaching conversations that inspire, challenge, and measurably build sales performance—tailored to each seller's unique motivations and opportunities for growth.

Speaker: C. Lee Smith, Founder and CEO, SalesFuel

Leading Through Chaos: Aligning Strategy, Sales, and Human Judgment in the Age of AI

In this exclusive fireside chat, Harvard Business School's Frank Cespedes joins Gerhard Gschwandtner, Founder of Selling Power, to explore how sales leaders can align strategy, structure, and behavior in a world that never stops changing. Together they'll unpack what's truly transforming in sales – and what timeless principles still anchor success. From AI's real impact on productivity to the enduring power of human judgment, this conversation offers pragmatic guidance for leaders seeking clarity amid chaos. Learn how to orchestrate people, processes, and technology to create alignment, elevate performance, and drive growth in 2026 and beyond.

Speaker: Frank Cespedes, Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School

Empowering Sales in the Age of AI: Blending Technology with the Human Touch

Empowering sales means giving sellers the freedom to act like entrepreneurs – within a clear, guided system that removes friction and builds confidence. This panel explores how enablement leaders can design such systems, where AI and technology amplify success by streamlining preparation, personalizing outreach, and surfacing actionable insights. When done right, technology enhances, not replaces, the human connection that wins trust and closes deals. Join us to explore how leading organizations blend structure, autonomy, and AI-driven intelligence to empower sellers, strengthen customer relationships, and drive sustainable sales growth.

Moderator: Jaren Krchnavi, Head of Sales Enablement, Siemens
Panelists: Kate Philpot, VP of Global Sales Enablement, Getty Images
Niamh Murray Lalanne, VP of Global Sales Enablement, Mirakl
Sabine Stokar von Neuforn, Head Sales Enablement, ATOSS Software SE

Microlearning for Performance Enablement

The market moves fast and your sales team has to move faster. In this 10-minute session, you'll see how teams at Akamai, Samsung, and TikTok build crucial sales skills at market speed using targeted, mobile-first training. A quick live demo will show you how to create a ready-to-ship sales training resource in minutes.

Speaker: Ezra Charm, Co-Founder and COO, 7taps Microlearning

How AI Destroyed My Revenue Enablement Belief System

Once upon a time, it was called "sales enablement." It was too often limited to poorly designed, badly delivered, and mostly ignored sales training for new product launches, new playbooks, and tired, old-school methodologies. It was typically owned by marketers who'd never sold anything, or – gasp – by well-meaning HR folks who never interacted with actual buyers. And it was measured on activity and adoption, rather than on sales effectiveness.

As enablement matured, however, two evolving trends coincided: increasing sales ownership of enablement expanding the constituencies to other customer-facing roles – hence the pivot to "revenue enablement" – and the development of bespoke enablement platforms serving both content and learning needs for GTM team members within a single platform.

This is when enablement-as-a-function began drifting away from its roots as a discipline, and over-pivoting to a department predominantly focused on tool management. As an analyst charged with helping enablers optimize their effectiveness, I railed against this on public stages and in thousands of private customer meetings: your job is more than tech purchasing and adoption; it's continuously smoothing the path toward reps achieving Winner's Circle. Technology amplifies your good work but doesn't independently solve any sales problems.

And then... AI. Revenue enablement leaders must still be expert at their craft, and grow talent accordingly, but now – and forevermore – not a single GTM team member will be successful without foundational, continuously evolving expertise around co-selling with AI. This keynote session will challenge your assumptions and raise your game around enablement, technology, budgets, success metrics, and more.

Speaker: Peter Ostrow, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester

Selling with Video: How to Increase Deal Velocity & Win Rates in the Age of AI

Research shows today's buyers want to make decisions without ever talking to a salesperson, (even as they wrestle with more complexity), AI-generated noise, and internal misalignment than ever. Sales leaders see the consequences daily: stalled deals, confused stakeholders, and outreach that gets ignored because it feels robotic.

This session gives you a modern, actionable blueprint for breaking through that noise with strategic video and AI.

You'll learn how to move from static messaging to personalized video that boosts open rates, strengthens discovery, and equips champions to drive internal consensus so deals move faster and win rates climb.

Speaker: Shari Levitin, Professional Speaker, Author of Heart and Sell, and CEO, Shari Levitin Group

"Pre-constructing" the Room: The New Science of Enterprise Meeting Prep

Everyone talks about sales pipeline, but no one talks about the cognitive load required to earn it. When Enterprise sellers walk into high-stakes meetings armed with surface-level facts rather than deep intelligence, it creates a blind spot. After 25 years of watching companies repeat the same pattern—unused tools everywhere— watching recordings AFTER the fact. ControlTheRoom was created to expose the blind spots, and give sales professionals unparalleled access to insights BEFORE you walk into the meeting. It reconstructs the "room": company culture, decision dynamics, psychological profiles, financial pressure, internal politics, and risk signals buried in plain sight. This session challenges the assumption that sellers "just need more activity." No. They need more awareness. If you can't elevate the mind in the room, you can't control the outcome.

Speaker: MariAnne Vanella, Founder and CEO, The Vanella Group

The Agentic Sales Era: Unlock Revenue Without Adding Headcount

Why Activation, not Enablement, Will Define the Next Decade of Selling

For the last decade, sales teams have been operating inside an outdated model: more training, more content, more tools, yet win rates, ramp times, and selling capacity continue to decline. The problem isn't talent. The problem is design.

Enablement was built for administration. Modern reps need activation.

In this provocative session, Sreedhar Peddeneni and Ron Baden reveals the core shift driving the next era of sales performance: the rise of the Agentic Rep – human sellers who think, adapt, and act with real-time autonomy. Sree and Ronwill break down the five readiness levers that consistently increase win rates, show why non-agentic behavior quietly drains millions in revenue capacity, and explain how activation restores selling time without adding headcount.

Attendees will walk away with a new operating model for sales:

Five Levers → Five Hours Back → Higher Win Rates.

If you're responsible for building high-performing revenue teams in 2026, this is the talk you can't afford to miss.

Speakers: Ron Baden, Chief Revenue Officer, GTM Buddy
Sreedhar Peddineni, CEO, GTM Buddy

The Science of Peak Performance

Learn how elite performers train, improve, and win - every time. Join Gerhard Gschwandtner and Alex Kutsishin for a fast-moving fireside chat on the proven math behind human performance. You'll learn the same improvement system used by world-class athletes, special operations teams, and Michelin-star chefs to produce consistent, predictable gains.

We'll break down the formula, the mechanics of deliberate practice, and how structured feedback accelerates growth. You'll walk away with concrete examples and simple steps for applying the method to sales, commission-driven roles, and executive leadership.

If you're looking for reliable ways to accelerate skill development, lift quota attainment, and build high-performing teams, this session delivers a crisp, evidence-backed playbook you can use immediately.

Speaker: Alex Kutsishin, Co-Founder and CEO, FUEL !nc.

Fireside Chat: Stroke of Success

Join Gerhard Gschwandtner in a powerful fireside chat with Roderick Jefferson, author of Stroke of Success: Overcoming Adversity Through Resilience and Purpose. Roderick shares his deeply personal journey of surviving a stroke and transforming that experience into a roadmap for leadership, growth, and gratitude. Together, they explore how vulnerability can become a source of strength, how mindset shapes recovery and success, and how leaders can turn life's setbacks into defining moments of clarity and courage. This inspiring conversation blends humanity, hope, and high performance – a masterclass in resilience and reinvention.

Moderator: Gerhard Gschwandtner, Founder and CEO, Selling Power
Speaker: Roderick Jefferson, Enablement Leader, Keynote Speaker, Bestselling Author

How to Get Booked on Podcasts: The New LinkedIn Strategy

You don't need a PR agency—you need a system. In this one-hour workshop, LinkedIn expert Brynne Tillman will show you how to identify ideal podcasts, craft standout pitches using her CRISPY™ Framework, and connect authentically with hosts via LinkedIn or email. You'll learn how to find shows that boost credibility, write irresistible pitches, and delegate outreach without losing your voice. Walk away with proven templates, a podcast tracker, and pre-interview prompts to sound like a pro from the first question—plus the confidence to show up as a trusted expert who attracts real opportunities.

Speaker: Brynne Tillman, CEO and LinkedIn Whisperer, Social Sales Link

The Human Edge: How Meaningful Conversations Outperform AI in B2B Sales

Sales technology has promised efficiency, but it has also distanced salespeople from what truly drives deals: human-to-human conversations. While AI and automation flood sales teams with tools, win rates remain low, and reps spend only 34% of their time actually selling. In this session, sales strategist Anthony breaks down why high-performing sales teams prioritize authentic, trust-building conversations over tech-driven shortcuts. Learn how to simplify your sales process, eliminate distractions, and equip your team with the skills to engage, connect, and close more deals—without relying on AI to do the talking. The secret to winning? It starts with a conversation.

Speaker: Anthony Iannarino, Managing Director, B2B Sales Coach and Consultancy

The Neuroscience of Selling

John Asher will cover the six activators that will wake up the buyer's emotional or instinctive (reptilian) brain. He will also cover the nine cognitive biases that apply directly to sales success. All participants will gain a handful of neuroscience-based action items that will result in closing deals faster at a higher closing rate.

Speaker: John Asher, CEO, Asher Strategies

This One Time At Brand Camp: Driving Success With Your Story

"Once upon a time..." Don't those words just strike you in a very different way than "To whom it may concern?" Your brain just loves a good story. We hear facts...but we feel stories, and respond to them differently. And every brand, company, owner, manager, employee and customer has stories to share that can help create relationship, retention, referrals, recruits, revenue and more. This practical and fun presentation gives you the step-by-step playbook on how to find and tell your own brand stories – and see more results. In this session, you will learn:

• How to find your stories – and which are the very best at driving results for your business
• Why and how to use emotion appropriately in your story
• The importance of capturing and preserving your professional stories
• How to empower others (including customers!) to tell your story
• What steps to take to get started right away

Speaker: Sue Woodard, Senior Advisor, STRATMOR Group

The AI Habit Trap: Avoid The Fatal Flaw Sales Leaders Never Saw Coming

Sales leaders are turning to A.I. to sharpen their teams' skills—but what if it's reinforcing the wrong ones?

A.I. doesn't fix bad habits; it multiplies them. Without the right communication training upfront, sales teams risk hardwiring ineffective messaging at scale. In this session, discover the hidden flaw in A.I.-driven sales enablement, why "garbage in, garbage out" is more than a cliché, and how to ensure A.I. accelerates success, not failure. Don't let your team fall into the habit trap.

Speaker: Jeff Bloomfield, Founder and Chairman, Braintrust

Unlock the Power of Negotiation

In today's B2B market, the difference between winning and losing often comes down to one skill — Negotiation. Every sales call is a negotiation, and negotiation isn't the final step — it is the sales process.

The Closing Time Sales Negotiation™ System by Ron Hubsher teaches teams how to create leverage early, protect margins, and control the decision process from the very first conversation. Reps learn to uncover true buyer motivations, quantify value, and set clear walk-away points that prevent discounting, deal slippage, and competitive resets.

By applying negotiation principles throughout the sales cycle, your team eliminates wasted effort, improves forecast accuracy, increases deal size, and closes faster with greater predictability. Trusted by ADP, Google, and Western Digital, this proven system helps teams win more — without giving away margin — and demystifies negotiation by making it simple, structured, and easy to repeat

Speaker: Ron Hubsher, CEO, Sales Optimization Group

Secrets to Building the Foundation for a Fabulous 2026

While much of the world has become overwhelmingly enamored with AI and related shiny objects, our end customers continue to focus on business goals, milestones, OKRs and MBOs. And they are increasingly confused and frustrated. They need our help more than ever!

For those of us leading or enabling sales organizations, we must focus on building and strengthening the operational foundation that ensures success.

Lee will outline the roadmap for success, covering the mechanics of success, the tools for success and the glue that sticks it all together. He will also prescribe specific next steps and provide multiple resources to help ensure that success.

Speaker: Lee Levitt, Managing Director, Acelera Group

High Trust Selling in a High Tech World

In a world driven by automation, AI, and digital speed, trust has never been more valuable—or more rare. In this powerful session, Todd Duncan reveals how to harness technology without losing humanity. You'll discover how to use high-tech tools to enhance, not replace, authentic connection—and how to build deep, lasting trust that accelerates conversions, referrals, and loyalty. Learn the proven framework for creating meaningful human moments in a digital age and walk away ready to sell smarter, serve deeper, and stand out in a world where trust is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Speaker: Todd Duncan, Bestselling Author & Co-Founder, FUEL !nc.

Driven to Succeed: The Blueprint for Sales Greatness How to Build Momentum, Master the Process, and Close Deals with Confidence

Sales is the lifeblood of any business, yet too often, even talented salespeople struggle with inconsistency, lose momentum, or fail to close the deals that matter most. Drawing from decades of frontline experience, John shares the proven strategies top performers use to consistently build their businesses.

Speaker: John Chapin, SVP and Business Partner, Mental Toughness University