AI-Powered Seller

Why Every CRO Must Learn AI Or Get Left Behind

• Jake Dunlap • Episode 35

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What happens when a seasoned CRO decides to stop “exploring” AI and actually master it? We sit down with Colin Van Excel to chart the path from a single prompt that wrote a price increase letter to a full, AI-first sales operating system. The story is practical, candid, and packed with takeaways you can use today, whether you lead a revenue org or carry a quota.

We start with the real barriers holding teams back: fuzzy sales processes, inconsistent stage criteria, and sellers buried in admin. Colin explains how he rebuilt around the buyer’s journey, then layered AI to enforce consistency and speed. Think call transcripts auto-summarized into Salesforce, hot points captured and resurfaced before the next meeting, and follow-up emails drafted with context and tone in minutes. The result? More time with customers, less time wrestling with notes, and a measurable lift in deal velocity.

Colin also breaks down why certification matters and how structured learning accelerates impact. He walks through a six-week arc: sharpening prompts, using variables, building workflows in Make, and presenting a working automation to graduate. The big unlock is meta-learning—using AI to learn AI. When he got stuck, he fed the system context and constraints and received working code and steps to finish the job. That shift turns leaders from passive consumers into confident builders.

We don’t sugarcoat the stakes. Leaders who stay hands-off risk being underemployed by 2028. The advantage goes to those who learn the tools, define clear processes, and deploy automations that free sellers to sell. If you’re ready to replace “pay your dues” busywork with AI agents that actually move revenue, this conversation is your playbook. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs the push, and leave a review with the first workflow you want to automate—we’ll tackle the best ones on a future show.

SPEAKER_01:

It's like I can ask the thing that I'm trying to do the thing to help me to do the thing that I'm, you know, it's like you know, it's like it's like some some kid's riddle or something like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the certification was really the next natural step, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_01:

Sales has uh has been, for the most part, always a little bit of a pay-your-du's kind of culture.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a whole nother level of evolution of thinking out how to learn. Like you said, ask the thing that you're trying to train to fix the problem so that you can train it better.

SPEAKER_01:

If you're not investing in yourself around these, you know, you're really it's not even gonna be behind. It's just you're gonna get outperformed.

SPEAKER_00:

How can AI help me do this faster and better? And literally, it's on my computer every day.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, welcome everyone to another episode of The Innovative Seller. I'm your host, Jake Dunlap, as always. And today's episode is specifically for all the AI people still saying, yeah, I know I need to get better at that, but that's my RevOps person's job. I cannot tell you how many sales teams, how many sales leaders, how many CROs, how many SVPs, how many CEOs I talk to, that that is still the mindset. And today's guest is going to tell you why, if you are a anyone from a CRO down to a you know frontline manager or rep, you cannot say, yeah, this is something that's interesting. You have to start to say, I have to do something today. And my guest today, Colin Van Excel. Colin is, I mean, a 20-plus year VP of global sales and CRO. Uh, he's been an active member of the innovative seller community. Shout out to Colin for that in particular. And I think more than anything, out of any of the CROs that I'm seeing out there, this guy is out there watching YouTube videos, getting up to speed, building automations, getting certified. He actually just completed our AI agent certification program for sales managers. Uh, if you have not signed up for that, we've got a new class kicking off here next month. Make sure to sign up for it. And the reasons why, about halfway through the episodes, he's gonna tell you why he is convinced that if you do not get on top of AI, most CROs are going to be underemployed by 2028. And so without further ado, thank you so much, Colin, for joining me. I'm excited for today's episode. AI powered seller. Colin, really excited for the conversation. And thank you again for joining me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thanks. It's a great time to be here, Jacob. Really excited to join you today.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, you've kind of been like a the AI like all in guy, you know, like everything that, you know, you know, we've been working on around AI, you're just like soaking it up. And, you know, maybe, maybe let's start with like your AI origin story. You know, what was it for you? You know, you've been a you know, multiple signed sales leader, you know, consultant with a lot of companies to uh you know, for someone at your level, like what was your like first real introduction to AI where you said, uh, yeah, I need to do something here.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's interesting. So it was in my uh last corporate role. Actually, I was VP of global sales for like a company that's like a hundred million dollars. I had about five or six regional managers, 50 people total. And we actually were doing a uh price increase. Beginning of the year, it had to be like February-ish. We're doing a price increase. Um, by education, I'm an engineer, even though I've got 25 plus years of sales experience. I'm an engineer, I'm a process guy, I think very process oriented. And my weakness, which is always good to know, is like if you put a blank sheet of paper in front of me, I'm not great, right? It's like it takes me a long time to generate something that's really good. Uh, a couple of my team members were like, hey, we need a price increase letter. It's not the biggest company in the world, so it fell on me of all people to do a price increase letter. And I was like, let me uh let me see this new chat GPT thing that was going on. And so it had to be like the fall of 22, beginning of 23. I don't remember exactly when it was.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, literally, yeah, 22 is when it came out.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's probably uh like it's 23 then. It was probably 23. Yeah, so I wrote the worst, I actually went back and found it. I wrote the worst prompt ever. It says, it says, I need to communicate a price increase to customers. And out came a letter. That's all I wrote. Literally, it's all I wrote. Yeah, and out came a letter that got me 90% of the way there. And I was like, actually, there was an expletive which I won't put on your podcast, as I said, because I was just so amazed that of what it did and how fast it did it. Just like everything else, but AI got me 90% of the way there, I fine-tuned it. I had a price increase letter out to customers inside of 60 minutes, and that normally would have taken me, with my mind, a better part of half a day.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and it's like not adding value, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Like, I needed to be talking to customers.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, there's just yeah, there's so much more stuff. You know, obviously you know where you could take it now. And look, I mean, you've been kind of in the the innovative seller, you know, community for a while. You know, what was it now? So you had this kind of first, you know, kind of dabble into it. Like, what was it for you that said, like, you know, I need to build this into my business? So it's like, okay, like, hey, this is a I think like especially around then, like 23, 24, I think there's a lot of uh, you know, leaders who are like, yeah, I I use Chat GBT. Yeah, you know, like I kind of use it. Like, what for you was has been kind of a tipping point? You know, is there is there something that you remember or something that happened where you go, man, like this is not like, yeah, I need to learn this. Like, no, this is like a foundational shift.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So a little background. So my foundational shift uh came after we had a leadership change, uh managing director change at that company I was telling you about. And so the whole leadership board level got uh changed out, right? So I was actually in between roles at that point in time. And I was starting to look for a new one. I took some time off, started to look for a new role, was really weighing whether I wanted to be an entrepreneur or not. I was something I'd always dreamed of doing and just hadn't done it yet. And the tipping point, because I'd used it, I had used it, like I said, at the company briefly, I used it to help me do some resume work when I was thinking about getting a new role. But the tipping point was, and I can't remember what you called it, but uh to give you a plug, the innovative seller masterclass, actually, way back when. You helped, I actually at the time I was between roles, you were kicking up the innovative seller. I don't know if the book is out yet or coming. No, it wasn't out yet because I hadn't gotten a copy of it yet. But I knew that I was in between roles and I wanted to keep my saw sharp, right? Back old Franklin Covey days, right? I had to keep my brain going. So I was like, well, that AI thing was pretty good. Let me learn more about it. Jumped into your class, that master class met you, met Brian. You guys did an excellent job kind of talking about where this was heading back then. This had to be 23-ish, probably. Um, because I started actually, no, it was 24 probably, because I started my company in 25. It was 24, it was early 24. After that class, I was like, I'm going to start my company, actually, because all my fears, everything I was worried about with regard to starting the company is what I didn't know. And now I had this tool in place that would help me bridge the gap between everything I didn't know really quickly. And so I jumped in and said, I'm gonna become a fractional sales leader. I'm gonna take all those skills I've learned over the years and bring them in my own business and start teaching people who normally don't have the opportunity to get a um a leader of my caliber with my skill set to actually come into their business and help them. So that was a typical.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, well, that's awesome. We pre you know, definitely that's great. That's the goal is that you know it sparks somebody to say, you know, hey, I need to do something, versus like, I, you know, I I read 15 books last year and don't remember anything, uh, which I think is a lot of folks. And and like what what about the certification? You know, like tell me about like, you know, we obviously launched the certification last year. We've got our kind of second group coming up now. You know, what was it about that you said, you know what, this is I need to go deeper, right? So, you know, you're already kind of diving in. I realize that this is a core part of what I need to know and do. What was it about the certification where you said, look, even as a senior sales leader of your caliber, you know, because I think again, I think what I see a lot of, you know, Colin is a lot of senior sales leaders saying, like, yeah, like we use it, my RevOps team is is exploring it. And honestly, a little hands off, a little hands off in terms of kind of how they're they're managing it. So, what was it about the certification that you're like, hey, I I need to learn this stuff?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the certification was really the next natural step, to be honest with you. So, following the progression I told you about, I started my company and literally I was using AI to help me do everything, starting my company and then getting it off the ground. So it was by CMO. It would help me do LinkedIn posts. Like it was basically churning out marketing for me every week from that standpoint, right? Um, and I was using it so much that it became really apparent that I was good. I listened to other people's podcasts, I did a read a bunch of books, and I realized that my prompting skills between the masterclass and the sort of certification of being released were had actually gotten really good. I was actually a pretty good power user of prompting it to do what I needed. And I I understood that. But I recognized that for me, the key to AI is are you thinking big enough? Right. I basically have a little spreadsheet, a little sticket on my computer, and this came just another gentleman, Jeff Woods, and the sticket says, How can AI help me do this faster and better? And literally it's on my computer every day. So every time I start something, I think about how I can use it to make my life easier, or in terms of sales leaders, how do you make your team's life easier so they do that? And I know we'll get into that a little bit more uh more at the end of the call. But but the key really is is I felt like you guys got me my bachelor's, right? And I felt like the master's the masters was gonna be it's the next step, right? It's like, okay, I know how to use AI. Now, how do I take that and actually really make workflows, being the process guy I am, more efficient and more effective? And so it was just naturally the next thing. As soon as I saw it, I don't know if I was the first person to sign up, but I had to be in the top five. I was in the pretty quick.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you definitely had to be like one of the top, top one or two. So look, as I mentioned, if you're in the same spot Colin was in, right, you've been watching, maybe you've done a little bit of testing. Definitely make sure to check out our certification programs. I'll put a little link in the uh bio and in the uh the notes for the show. And also make sure, look, subscribe to the channel where every week we're putting out AI-powered seller content. Make sure you get up to date on those notices. If you're ready to get serious like Colin, make sure to sign up for the cert as well, too. Yeah. As a part, that's actually a really good segue in terms of what you're seeing in the market, right? So you've made an investment in yourself. Obviously, you're kind of trying to look ahead for building and scaling revenue teams and what that's gonna look like in this new, you know, the kind of this new way that we work. Um, you know, what's the biggest mess you see that's kind of killing these, you know, kind of organizations' ability to scale? Like what are some of the like the big gaps you see when you're coming in that, you know, kind of thinking about whether it's AI or you know, effectiveness or the issue and then how AI can support? Like, what is there are there some consistent things that you're seeing that you know from companies that are in that kind of growth mode?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the the biggest issue, and it does definitely affect AI implementation, is the either a complete lack of a process or people lack lack of follow in the process, right? It's just not well documented. So I deal, you know, I'm not dealing with enterprise customers. I'm dealing more with small and mid-sized customers that either ha haven't built in a sales process or have like loosely committed to one, right? And said, we're gonna do it, but they don't measure it well, they don't follow it well, people follow it differently. And that usually is the uh the biggest issue that I find when I deal with the particular people I talk to. And the key to that is is helping them build one. That's where I go in. So as a fractional sales leader or a sales trainer, I go in and help them define a process built around their buyer's journey, right? That's the key thing. And then getting back to what I do, what makes me differentiate me in the marketplace is that once I have that process, I teach them how to supercharge it using AI because you can get you can make the people who are using it much more efficient and effective going through the process if you build in some tools for them to use.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And so for do you feel like, you know, the pro you know, I always we talked to a lot of companies like process and technology. How do you think about AI being different than like a tech fix, for example?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So it's different just because of the inherent, what the inherent what the tool is, basically, right? What this tool does so many different things. Its ability to actually generate ideas, uh, you know, being generative AI and to help you gather data quickly does things most tools up into my career haven't been able to do, right? You actually had to go Google things and do it yourself. AI just brings it all back to you, right? And so that's what makes it a difference. And I and the biggest thing that I find with the sales leaders is that they either haven't had the time to invest in it or are a little unsure about the benefits and how it's going to affect their role. You know, you talk about when you talked earlier about people who are like the kind of hands off. Well, A, they're time constrained, right? Because uh anybody who's leading a team of salespeople doesn't have enough, uh has too much to do because they're trying to manage a team below them and they're trying to manage their bosses above them, right? And no boss likes to hear that, but they you're actually doing that. So no time. Right? Yeah, exactly. So you have to have some time to invest to actually learn the tool. And that's what I find that they haven't done. But I usually speak to them about the the most important thing to, in my opinion, when I was a sales leader doing that, and it still is today, is the largest issue that most sales leaders deal with is the amount of time your salespeople spend selling, right? And most people will tell you it's like 60-40, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Maybe we've heard 20 24% is the slide we have. 24% is like actual time interacting.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And so it's admin work, it's behind the scenes work, it's all that stuff. And AI is the key to that, right? It's it's about removing the admin work so that the people can do it faster, or they don't have to do it at all. They can just take the output and they can spend much more time in front of customers doing their jobs driving revenue, right? And so if you can, if you take the 24 number, if you can turn that 24 to 50, you know, think about how much more effective your team is going to be about driving it. And that's the to me, that's the upside of using AI: efficiency, effectiveness, getting that admin work off your salespeople and having them drive to be the best that they can be.

SPEAKER_01:

What I love about what Colin's getting into is if you are someone who says, Jake, look, I don't have necessarily all the time, you have to check out Journey AI. It's meetjourney.ai. It already has assistants and agents pre-built for your revenue team. You can literally, in one click, customize it to your entire business. With one memory, you can customize it to your role. And you literally have 10 different assistants and agents helping you go and penetrate every account. You can set up accounts, it syncs with Salesforce, it syncs with your calendar. So if you're ready to turn AI from something that you know you're ready to dabble in to something that's shelf ready and can immediately make an impact, make sure you check out Journey. That's right. Yeah, like we've got a client right now calling where you know we did a big intake with their team last week. And when we talk to the sales team, they're kind of walking us through all the different details. And you know, the very first, you know, kind of AI workflow that we're building for them is immediately pulls the Zoom transcript as soon as the call is done. Because that's the other thing, too, is like the reps might take 30 minutes for that transcript to get done. It might take 40 bucks, but the refs got to kind of check their email, blah, blah, blah. But instead, it's like, you know, as soon as the transcript's done, we grab the transcript, we then pipe back into Salesforce what we call it like the hot points, which are like key things that they're interested in, next steps. They sell them a little bit more transactional product, uh, but I think any team needs this. So it's like when a sales rep gets back on the call and in five days, it's like, what are we talking about? You know, let's be honest. Like, you know, we don't remember. You know, it automatically pipes back, you know, the hot points and then automatically connects to their Gmail and creates a draft follow-up. And when you talk about the future of work, you know, you're gonna have, you know, a a year and a half from now, reps are gonna go, I've got to write my own follow-up email? Like, like what like I've got to log my own notes to Salesforce? And this is this is happening now. And so I think Paul and like you know, if you're just used to I feel like in and you can attest to this, sales has uh has been for the most part always a little bit of a pay your dues kind of culture. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like I would. You have to the old school guys would always be like, you haven't done the work, you know. I'm from the day I'm old, I'm from the day of phone banks, and if you haven't put in your time and stuff like that, right? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01:

And so yeah, and it has I didn't have LinkedIn, I didn't have these tools. Exactly. And so, you know, I think a lot of leaders in particular need to realize like, guys, you are you are forcing an efficiency that doesn't exist anymore. You know, like we we didn't have that. We didn't have a tool that could do A or B or C. And and and you know, Colin, a lot of things you're doing too, which is investing in yourself. Because I think for most sales leaders, you need to know the art of possible. And and a lot of these things, until you really get into it, it's tough to fathom it. It's tough to really like, you know, when you really start to think, wait, wait, what? A tool could actually do that? And it's like, yeah, and do it right now. And so, you know, for you, kind of last last kind of couple questions here, you know, as we kind of talk about kind of your journey with AI, bottlenecks, and where we're seeing kind of AI quickly cleaning that up, you know, you went through scales AI agent certification for sales managers. Uh, you know, tell me a little bit about like the structure of it and you know, maybe, you know, what was what are some things that were like your biggest aha's as you were kind of going through this and you know, what you found to be really different from watching a few YouTube videos or talking to people about AI.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. No, so um, yeah, it was great. First of all, shout out to Brian. I'm not sure if Brian's teaching second cohort, but Brian um He is, yeah. Brian will be in the house. He is uh an awesome instructor and he breaks things down really well. So like shout out to him. I talked to him on LinkedIn quite a bit. But um the structure, the way he structures the class, I think is really smart. First of all, the first tweak is really uh review on prompting, right? And so I would say that you kind of need to at least have your bachelor's or at least something close to it in the prompting, right? Because you need to be a pretty decent prompter in order to get your workflows to work effectively. But he does a brief review of that, which is really a review of the masterclass that we had way back when. And if you go to Innovative Sellers website, you'll find a bunch of prompts there. Some of them you need to take down because they're really old. I cracked up when I saw some of them because they're like two years old. Oh my oh my God, this is so old. Yeah. But they're um, but you can figure that out. So first week's prompting. Second week, he teaches a little bit about variable prompting, which means you're pulling variables in from different places so that if you're looking, if you had the need to look at multiple inputs, that you know how to do that, which is something that wasn't taught in the original class. So um, so that worked out uh really well. Third week is really about the automation tool that he teaches on, which is the which is the software which you would which creates the workflow. Yeah, uses make NADM make. We use make because it's uh simpler from that standpoint. So he gets you used to the basics of that. Third week, I should say fourth week, is his first example of automation, right? He gives you, he's written something and you walk through it, right? So you walk through how each piece works. He goes a little bit into how to make the tool pushing the buttons, is what I call it. He tells you how to push the buttons a little bit and how to make it work with uh very simple um automation. And then uh the fifth week, he comes back and shows you a few more that are way more complicated, right, from that standpoint, and he walks through each of those for you. And then sixth week is the project, like at the end of the day, in order to graduate, which I love about this. You just don't walk out. And get a participation trophy. You actually have to do something that is that is automated, right? And usually the people who are there, at least I should say one of the other things that's really good about it is like I tried to attend live all the time, and we had a really good cohort that I've hooked up with on LinkedIn. So you get to actually do some networking from that standpoint of like-minded people with from the AI perspective. That's what I said, but you literally have to go in and show Brian that you've actually done some automation, right? That it actually works. And so you can't leave the class with a certification if you haven't proven it works. And I love that because that actually shows him and yourself, by the way, that you actually do this, right? It's just a YouTube show. Oh, I watched it, therefore I know how to do it. It's like you haven't done anything yet until you actually made it work.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And that was really the goal, right? Is to like have this be a program where you know you could walk away from it and say, like, oh man, like I actually know how to do this stuff. And then, you know, and and around the automations, like for you, what was maybe something that stood out in terms of whether it was opening your horizons to the art of possible or you know, how easy it was to build or or not easy it was to build? What were some things around the automations? And just by doing that, where I think somebody might say, wait, I, you know, gosh, I don't know about that, but building an automate, like what that looks like. Like, what do you think the biggest impact was?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so first of all, um, we use make, and make is really simple. It's pretty much drag and drop. So, anyone, if you're thinking about taking the course, I'll tell you, do not be intimidated. The software is not that difficult, right? And if anything, it's more about connecting up the pieces that you're pulling together. And the biggest unlock for me, actually, which once again, you as people can hear, I'm a continuous learner. I learned something about myself because I had to teach myself how to learn in this new environment again, simply because uh Brian, who does a great job, didn't show he went through on how to build a workflow, but didn't go dramatically into pushing the buttons on each individual um section that you're building. And when I was trying to put together my project, I was getting frustrated because I was going back through the videos, he records them, and I couldn't figure out why he didn't do it because that's the way I'm used to learning. But I did catch as I was watching the videos again, he did say it's like, hey, if you run into problems in any particular area, you guys are master prompters. Step outside of what you're doing, tell the tool what you're doing, and ask it to help you find the answer. To help you figure it out. Jake, that was like to me, like it was like, again, like it's like my third AI revelation going, oh my God, I don't have to, no one has to teach me something step by step. If I just asked a tool how to do it, it actually, when I was stuck, it actually wrote itself. Not only did I was prompted it, prompted it so specifically that it was like, here's the code, just cut this out and put it in and it'll work. And sure enough, the whole thing was solved. I didn't have to do it.

SPEAKER_01:

And that is so the future there. It's that I think we're just not used to that type of circular logic, right? Where it's like logic, I can ask the thing that I'm trying to do the thing to help me to do the thing that I'm you know, it's like you know, it's like it's like some some kid's riddle or something like that. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

But it it completely blew my mind. I was like, oh my god, this and then that and then but again, this little self-evaluation, it's like, well, that's my problem. I don't I haven't learned this way before. Uh you know, I probably say me, it means books. It's like step by step, it's you know, following the process, it's jotting notes down, and I've tried to evolve as best I could, but this is not whole to your point. It's like, wait, what? What did I just say?

SPEAKER_01:

And that's I that's right. But again, I think what you realize is like, and then it worked. And you're like, And then it worked. This is the future.

SPEAKER_00:

Like it worked and it was it worked immediately. And so I told people I'm an engineer by trade. Like, I've done programming before, I've done some things. I'm I've been a sales guy for 25 years, so I'm probably no good at it anymore. But just the fact that like it just printed it out and I could cut and paste it, like that in old school, you know, 1990s would have taken me two days to figure out where the incorrect parentheses was.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. That's right, exactly. Like go and keep going back to it. And so look, man, Colin, this has really been incredible. I think what stands out to me is, you know, you're not, you know, an AI, you know, native founder, you know, you're a sales leader with, you know, 20 plus years of experience. You've worked with big companies, small and scaling companies, and everywhere in between. And, you know, really embracing this and really starting to realize like, look, if I'm gonna be great at my job, you know, and both of us have some gray hairs, right? Like, that, hey, we can't sit back and the way, and yes, you know, we both had some good runs and some good track records, but in two to three years, that's not gonna mean much. That if you're still building and scaling the the old way, and if you're not, you know, and this goes for sales reps out there too, because we also have the the rep certification course. If you're not investing in yourself around these, you know, you're really it's not even gonna be behind. It's just you're gonna get outperformed. You know, there's gonna be somebody who is learning it. And, you know, Colin, you've been an amazing example of somebody who, as a leader, is leading from the front and really kind of making sure you're staying on top of what's what's possible today and being able to think through what's possible tomorrow. So, Colin, really appreciate you joining me, talking through, you know, with us a little bit about your AI AI experience. And I think it's certainly something that you know, hopefully every leader, every sales rep really embraces. So really appreciate you joining me and sharing the story.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to talk to the uh community. Uh thank you and Brian for everything you've done. Like you said, you had a great impact on my career as it is today. And I look forward to continuing listening and learning to uh the innovative seller community.

SPEAKER_01:

More stuff to come, my friend. So again, thanks, Colin. Thank you everybody for tuning in, and we will see you on the next one. Take care.

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Jake Dunlap

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