How to Win Executive Roles in the Age of AI

How to present transformational AI strategy and leverage Cialdini's principles to become the inevitable choice with maximum negotiating power.

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Today we explore a reader question from one of our paid subscribers:

Dear Jacob,

I have a make or break moment NEXT WEEK!

I've made it to the final round for a VP of Marketing role—but so have 5 other candidates. I need to present for 2 hours to a 6-person panel covering:

• A career accomplishment I'm proud of

• How the company should rethink Marketing's role to win in the age of AI

The recruiter says I'm a "very strong candidate" with great cultural fit and positive feedback from all previous interviews.

But here's the thing: with 6 finalists, technical competence won't be enough. I need to demonstrate executive presence, strategic thinking, and disruptive innovation to stand out.

How do I create genuine engagement and buy-in while leveraging Cialdini's principles to position myself for the strongest possible offer and negotiating leverage?

Six candidates made it to the final round. Five will present competently. One will engineer the offer before even finishing their slides.

As our fellow reader astutely acknowledges, the psychology of influence is what it will take to win this deal. Here’s to the winner being our well researched and ambitious reader.

But first, let's address the elephant in the room.

That "very strong candidate" feedback from your recruiter?

Take it with a grain of salt.

Recruiters need every candidate to feel like the favorite, otherwise their pipeline collapses. As we've shared in our negotiation deep dives, if each party doesn't feel like a deal is possible, then nobody will go through the effort of negotiating at all.

Everyone advancing to final rounds received similar encouragement. Everyone feels like the frontrunner. The recruiter's job is to keep candidates engaged, not provide accurate competitive intelligence.

I’ve learned this from working with the world’s best leaders. Everyone thinks that they are exceptional. Somebody has to be wrong.

This changes everything about how you approach your presentation.

Most executives approach final presentations as showcases. Elite executives approach them as influence operations. They understand that 2 hours in a conference room isn't about demonstrating competence—it's about creating inevitability.

When 6 candidates advance to final rounds, traditional presentation advice fails completely.

• Everyone is qualified.

• Everyone can speak confidently.

• Everyone has relevant experience.

• Everyone will deliver polished slides.

The winner is determined by entirely different factors.

Academic research from Old Dominion, Florida State, and Clemson universities studying over 600 real-world interviews reveals the psychological reality of hiring decisions.

While 30% of interviewers make decisions within the first five minutes, nearly 70% of decisions occur after five minutes—often extending well beyond the interview itself.

In panel settings, this dynamic intensifies as multiple decision-makers create cascading psychological effects that either build momentum for your candidacy or eliminate you from consideration.

Here's what really happens in the conference room while you focus on slide transitions.

The panel is conducting three simultaneous evaluations:

• Your executive presence under pressure

• Your ability to think strategically in real-time

• Whether you can influence outcomes when stakes are high

• Bonus: Do they like you? Can they trust you?

Your presentation becomes a proxy for your leadership potential.

When you master the psychology of final-round presentations, you're not just winning a job—you're positioning yourself as the only choice while creating maximum leverage for negotiations.

Understanding Your Real Audience

When you walk into that conference room, you're not facing six individual evaluators. You're entering a complex psychological system where group dynamics create entirely different influence requirements.

Panels don't evaluate—they validate.

By the time you reach final rounds, individual panel members have already formed preliminary opinions. Your presentation either reinforces them or disrupts them.

The Six-Person Decision Dynamic

Research from social psychology reveals that groups of 5-7 people create highly complex decision-making environments. A six-person panel has 21 possible two-way communication channels, compared to just 10 for a five-person group.

You're not just presenting to six individuals—you're navigating 21 potential influence pathways simultaneously.

Each panel member arrives with three competing priorities:

• Individual Assessment: Their personal evaluation of your fit

• Group Alignment: Their desire to reach consensus with colleagues

• Political Positioning: Their need to appear insightful and decisive

• Bonus - The Four H's at Play: Drawing from keynote speaker Shira Abel's Perception Formula, you must recognize that each panelist's perception of you is shaped by their unique mix of Heuristics (past hiring successes/failures), Hormones (interview stress and decision fatigue), History (their experiences with similar candidates), and Heritage (their cultural approach to evaluation). By creating a "Perception Recipe" for each interviewer type, you can tailor your responses to resonate with how they process information, not just what they want to hear

These competing priorities create predictable patterns:

The Dominant Voice will emerge within 15 minutes. This is not always the most senior person but rather the strongest personality. They'll drive the conversation and influence others' positions.

The Consensus Builders will monitor group sentiment and gravitate toward the emerging majority opinion. They rarely lead but often determine outcomes.

The Contrarians will challenge ideas to demonstrate their analytical rigor. They're not opposing you personally; they're performing intellectual due diligence.

The Silent Evaluators will observe more than participate. Their post-meeting influence is often disproportionate to their verbal contribution.

The Social Proof Cascade

In panel settings, opinions spread through social proof cascades. One person's enthusiasm becomes permission for others to express similar views. One person's skepticism can trigger collective doubt.

This is why the first 20 minutes of your presentation are mathematically more important than the rest.

Cialdini's Principles in Panel Settings

Traditional influence techniques require adaptation for group dynamics.

Here's how Cialdini's principles transform:

Authority

Individual authority comes from expertise. Panel authority comes from positioning yourself as the strategic thinker they need.

Instead of: "In my experience at Previous Company..."
Try: "Based on what I've learned about our challenges, here's how we should approach..."

Note that I used "our" challenges instead of "your" challenges.

Collaborative language develops a shared identity with your panel—a subconscious assumption that you're already part of the team. Make this language a habit immediately.

Social Proof

In panels, you create real-time social proof by getting panel members to build on your ideas—in order to make it feel like their ideas.

"What would you add to this approach?" transforms your presentation from monologue to collaboration.

When panel members contribute, they become invested in your success. Plus, you divert the attention to the team, have an opportunity to practice active listening for new ideas, and get a breather from the hot seat.

The execs who command the room the best will activate panel members and dissenters by vocalizing the body language they observe: "I'm noticing a few head nods, but Leslie and Ryan may have another take—what do you like or dislike about this approach?"

Be fearless.

Reciprocity

Give valuable insights they can use regardless of hiring outcome. Frame your recommendations as gifts: "Here's a framework I've developed that we should use for growth—regardless of your hiring decision. I feel strongly that this approach will make the impact we need."

This creates obligation while demonstrating confidence.

Enter the room with the confidence that you've already been hired and you're a consultant helping the team solve their challenges. Gone is the need to be impressive—you've already won. Now it's all about how we succeed together.

Scarcity

Create appropriate urgency by referencing market timing: "Companies that don't address this in the next 6 months will find themselves playing catch-up for years. I find it refreshing that we're aligned here and making the necessary investments to get after it. We’ll learn a lot together."

As a marketing leader, it’s best you have a strong opinion on the market. You’d be surprised at how many marketers don’t understand that concept.

The AI Transformation Context

Before diving deeper, I want to address a critical point in the reader's question that extends into all leadership right now.

What do you think the company should do to win in the age of AI and tech-enabled experiences?

We're living in a nuclear arms race—and if you're not on the frontier, you've become irrelevant overnight. Even if you are on the frontier, a single LLM update can render fully backed companies obsolete in the blink of an eye.

This question is a test of your strategic leadership.

Companies don't need executives who can adapt to AI. They need executives who can lead AI transformation and influence their entire organization.

The executives who will command premium compensation and opportunity are those who can articulate how AI fundamentally changes customer engagement, personalization, and growth strategies holistically.

Not how to use AI tools. Not a few prompts on ChatGPT. You must carry a strong opinion on how to reimagine strategy for an AI-enabled world.

Here are four tips to get started, courtesy of GTM Engineer, Justin Parnell:

1. Learn AI Fundamentals.

Spend time deeply learning what AI technology is at its core and what it can and cannot do. Go out and educate yourself deeply on General Pretrained Transformers, Interpretability, Monosemanticity, Backpropagation, Gradient Descent etc. This will enable you to think from first principles about how to apply the technology and where it can be successfully deployed.

In other words: Don't just learn how to use AI tools—learn how AI actually works under the hood. When you understand the engine, you can build better cars.

2. Be flexible.

Don't commit to any one model. Build in a model agnostic way that allows you to easily update your products and services with the best-in-class model for your job-to-be-done.

Just like engineers who built tightly coupled systems that became nightmares to maintain and update, companies that hardcode their processes around a specific AI model (like GPT-4 or Claude) are setting themselves up for the same monolithic pain.

3. Build, build, build and build.

Go in and start building yourself. Dedicate hours per week to building with AI. Vibe code an app. Train a custom GPT. Go into the developer console and play with different models. Getting hands on experience is going to be invaluable. Time spent building right now is not wasted.

4. Be skeptical and be a systems thinker.

Question the claims of anyone selling you an "agent."

Think about your work in terms of systems and jobs-to-be-done and how AI can be injected (from a first principles understanding) into your work to improve your overall system's capabilities.

You may enhance your current systems in a dramatic way, or you may end up conceiving of entirely new systems that are not even recognizable today.

The Two-Slide Strategic Framework

Your presentation has two requirements: demonstrate a career accomplishment and share your AI-enabled marketing vision.

Most executives treat these as separate showcases.

Their approach often fails because it positions them as seeking validation rather than providing strategic value.

Part 1: The Accomplishment Architecture

Choose accomplishments that mirror their current challenges, not your biggest wins.

Your accomplishment should answer their unspoken question: "How will this person approach our specific problems?"

The Context-Conflict-Resolution-Transformation Structure:

Context (30 seconds): Set the strategic landscape without excessive detail.

"We were facing a 40% increase in customer acquisition costs while our conversion rates were declining 15% quarter-over-quarter. The board was questioning our entire go-to-market strategy."

Conflict (45 seconds): Present the real challenge and why traditional approaches failed.

"Standard optimization tactics—A/B testing, adjusting bid strategies—weren't moving the needle (which sounds similar to a challenge we face today at COMPANY NAME). We needed to fundamentally rethink customer engagement."

Resolution (90 seconds): Walk through your strategic thinking process, not just actions.

"I realized we were optimizing for the wrong metrics. Instead of focusing on cost per acquisition, we shifted to lifetime value prediction. Here's how we restructured our entire funnel..."

Transformation (30 seconds): Show broader impact beyond immediate results.

"This approach didn't just solve our CAC problem—it changed how we think about customer value across the entire organization."

Throughout your accomplishment story, emphasize your thinking process over your actions. Use phrases like:

• "My hypothesis was..."

• "The data suggested..."

• "I challenged the assumption that..."

• "The breakthrough came when I realized..."

• And importantly, “I share this because it’s directly related to our challenges moving forward.”

Never rely on them to make the connection between your past accomplishments and their future challenges.

It’s on you to tell them it’s relevant and important to them—probe with deep questions to ensure you’re right—then continue to reinforce and sell that experience to close the deal.

Part 2: The AI Vision Positioning

Never begin with "Here's what I think you should do."

Start with "Here's where the market is heading, and here's how we position ourselves accordingly."

Example Opening:

"AI personalization is moving from competitive advantage to table stakes. Companies like Netflix and Spotify have 24-month head starts on behavioral prediction. The question is how quickly we can catch up and then leapfrog—and whether we have the courage to go all in."

The Three-Layer AI Framework

Present your vision in three strategic layers:

Layer 1: Foundation (What everyone will do)

"First-generation AI focuses on trained browser agents that work within existing software interfaces. Think Salesforce Einstein automating CRM tasks or support agents handling tickets through existing UIs. This is table stakes—every enterprise will deploy these browser-based agents within 6 months. We're already seeing this with tools like Agentspace's pre-built agents for common workflows."

Layer 2: Differentiation (What smart companies will do)

"Second-generation implementation breaks free from UI constraints. Agents directly read and write to databases, orchestrate complex multi-system workflows, and create their own operational intelligence layers. This is where platforms like Glean's Enterprise Knowledge Graph and Google's Vertex AI Agent Builder create competitive advantage—agents that understand your entire data ecosystem and can take autonomous action across it without human-in-the-loop processes."

Layer 3: Transformation (What industry leaders will do)

"Third-generation AI fundamentally reimagines how work gets done. Omnipresent AI assistants—triggered by calendar events, operational metrics, or predictive algorithms—proactively handle entire business processes. Imagine agents that don't wait for requests but anticipate needs based on your strategic agenda. This requires rethinking our entire operating model around AI-first processes, not just AI-enhanced ones."

As you communicate the flow, build appropriate pressure without appearing alarmist:

"The window for AI-powered marketing advantage is probably 6-12 months. After that, these capabilities become commoditized. Companies that move now define the new standards. Companies that wait spend years playing catch-up—if they’re still around."

Bringing This to Life

Let me make this concrete with an example marketing scenario.

Today, your team manually pulls campaign performance data, creates reports, and schedules optimization meetings.

Layer 1: Your AI agent automatically pulls daily performance metrics from Google Ads, Meta, and Salesforce, creating standardized reports.

Time saved: 2 hours daily.

Layer 2: The agent identifies underperforming campaigns, reallocates budget across channels based on CAC trends, and updates creative variants without waiting for human approval. It writes directly to your marketing databases and triggers new A/B tests.

Impact: 30% improvement in marketing efficiency.

Layer 3: The agent anticipates seasonal trends from historical data, preemptively adjusts budgets two weeks before demand spikes, automatically creates and deploys new creative variants based on competitor analysis, and schedules stakeholder updates only when anomalies require human judgment. Your marketing team shifts from execution to strategy.

Result: Marketing operates like a self-optimizing system.

Building Your AI-First Go-to-Market Team

Executing this vision requires a new breed of talent—which is why I suspect so many marketers are struggling to find work right now.

Forget traditional marketing ops roles—you need Go-to-Market Engineers who blend technical capability with business acumen.

Here's the team structure I'd recommend:

1. AI Implementation Lead (First hire)

• Background: ML engineer from a martech company or someone who's built marketing automation at scale

• Key skill: Can architect agent workflows and understand API limitations

• Interview tell: Ask them to whiteboard how they'd build an autonomous campaign optimization agent

This role becomes even more critical when you consider Carilu Dietrich's framework for building AI-forward teams, where she found leading companies are dedicating technical experts to accelerate department-wide AI adoption—moving from "weekend warriors" to dedicated headcount.

2. Data Infrastructure Engineer

• Background: Data engineer with marketing analytics experience

• Key skill: Can unify disparate data sources and create clean agent-readable schemas

• Interview tell: Have them explain how they'd structure data for agent decision-making, not just human dashboards

3. Agent Workflow Designer (This role doesn't exist yet in most orgs)

• Background: Process automation specialist or senior marketing ops manager with coding skills

• Key skill: Translates business logic into agent behaviors

• Interview tell: Give them a complex marketing process and ask how they'd decompose it for autonomous execution

4. AI Quality Assurance Lead

• Background: QA engineer with experience in ML model monitoring

• Key skill: Creates guardrails and monitoring for agent decisions

• Interview tell: Ask about their approach to catching edge cases in autonomous systems

Start with contractors or consultants for the first 90 days to prove the model and quickly run multiple petri dish experiments—then convert to full-time.

Budget 20-30% above traditional marketing ops salaries—you're competing with big tech companies for this talent.

Most importantly, give this team P&L accountability from day one.

They're not building tools; they're transforming how revenue gets generated.

For a glimpse of where this leads, consider Kyle Poyar's analysis of how Relay.app's CEO runs his entire marketing function with 40+ AI agents doing the work of a five-person team—proving that the future isn't about hiring more marketers, but about orchestrating intelligent systems.

Creating Your AI Implementation Culture

Beyond hiring the right team, you need to create space for experimentation and adoption.

As Emily Kramer demonstrates with marketing AI hackathons, teams that dedicate structured time to explore AI tools can go from "I should use this" to shipping real solutions in a single day—turning spreadsheets into interactive tools, automating campaign workflows, and building custom signals that drive revenue.

Quick Note for Marketing, Revenue & Growth Leaders

To our reader preparing for next week's panel—spend time with the full articles from Kyle Poyar, Justin Parnell, Carilu Dietrich, and Emily Kramer this weekend.

Their frameworks will give you concrete examples and insights that your competitors likely won't have.

For everyone else in marketing, revenue, and growth roles, these aren't just thought leaders; they're practitioners actively transforming how modern GTM teams operate.

Product leaders take note too—the convergence of AI and go-to-market strategy will reshape how we build, not just how we sell.

Subscribe to their work. Your future self will thank you.

The Critical Moments

Your 2-hour presentation boils down to three critical moments:

Moment 1: The Opening Authority (First 15 minutes)

Walk in with big consultant energy, not candidate desperation.

Open with:

"Based on our conversations and what I've learned about our challenges, I'm excited to share a few frameworks that will be useful—regardless of how this process unfolds."

Use names from previous conversations:

"As Sarah mentioned in our discussion about customer acquisition costs..."

This shows you've done your homework and celebrates the people in the room for their contributions. The best leaders elevate everyone around them, not just the players with the strongest brand, title, or energy.

Winning over the silent partners, contrarians, and dissenters is your key to mastery. If they get the right recognition, they’ll advocate for you when push comes to shove.

Moment 2: The Collaborative Engagement (15-90 minutes)

Transform your presentation into strategic dialogue. After every key point consider:

• What's your take on this approach?

  • Opens the floor for validation or constructive challenge.

• What's one thing I should have added, but didn't?

  • Shows humility while extracting their priorities fearlessly.

• "I'm curious how this aligns with what you're seeing in [their specific area]?"

  • Personalizes to each panel member's domain.

• "What would need to be true for this to work in our culture?"

  • Shifts from theory to implementation reality.

• "Where do you see the biggest risk in this approach?"

  • Invites contrarians to engage constructively.

• "How would you measure success differently?"

  • Gives silent evaluators a specific entry point.

• "What's worked or failed when you've tried something similar?"

  • Acknowledges their experience and extracts institutional knowledge.

Watch for Silent Evaluators and draw them in: "I'm noticing some thoughtful expressions—what questions are coming up for you?"

Moment 3: The Inevitability Close (90-120 minutes)

Shift from presenting to planning and action: "Here's how we'd approach the first 90 days together..."

This creates psychological ownership where they're envisioning you in the role rather than evaluating whether you deserve it.

If you fire their neurological paths to a beautiful outcome together, they can’t even picture your competition as an option.

Paint the Destination, Not Just the Journey:

• "By Q2, our AI agents will handle 40% of campaign optimization autonomously. Picture your team's Monday meetings—instead of reviewing performance reports, we're strategizing on market expansion because the tactical work runs itself."

• "Imagine walking into the board meeting six months from now. You're not defending marketing spend—you're presenting how our AI-driven approach generated a 3x pipeline with 20% less budget. The CFO is asking how to replicate this in other departments."

Create Tangible Milestones They Can Feel:

• Week 1-2: "I'll embed with the team, map our current workflows, and identify the three highest-impact AI implementations"

• Day 30: "We'll have our first AI agent live, probably in campaign performance monitoring—something visible that builds team confidence"

• Day 60: "The team sees their first 'wow' moment—an AI agent catches and fixes a budget inefficiency that would've cost us $50K"

• Day 90: "We present our AI transformation roadmap to the executive team, with early wins as proof points"

Use Present Tense to Assume the Sale:

• Replace: "If I were to join..." with "When we start on [specific date]..."

• Replace: "I would implement..." with "Here's what we're implementing..."

• Replace: "The team could see..." with "The team experiences..."

Address Their Unspoken Concerns Proactively:

• "I know you're thinking about change management. Here's how we make this transition feel exciting rather than threatening to the team..."

• "You're probably wondering about the learning curve. We'll run parallel systems for 30 days so there's zero disruption..."

• "The investment question is fair. Based on similar transformations, we typically see ROI within 120 days..."

End with Collaborative Next Steps:

• "What questions do we need to answer to move forward together?"

• "Who would you like me to connect with first to align on implementation?"

• "I’m available next week on Tuesday to finalize the details. Is there anyone else we should loop into the conversation?"

The key is making them feel the success, not just understand it intellectually. The more visceral and poignant, the better. They should leave the room already experiencing what it's like to have you leading this transformation.

Converting Success Into Compensation Leverage

Your presentation performance creates negotiation capital that most executives fail to capture.

Here's how to bridge the gap between impressing the panel and commanding premium compensation.

Throughout your presentation, you've positioned yourself as:

• Their strategic advisor, not just a candidate

• Someone who thinks in terms of "our" challenges

• An executive who creates value beyond the predetermined scope

• The only person who truly "gets" their specific situation

This positioning becomes your negotiation foundation. As I explain in The 10 Commandments of Executive Negotiation, Companies talk themselves into paying premiums for perceived perfect fits—because nobody else compares.

The Compensation Conversation

When they move to make an offer, reference your presentation strategically:

"I'm excited about what we discussed, especially the opportunity to [specific initiative you proposed]. Given the scope of transformation we're targeting, how do you value someone who can deliver these results?"

Notice how this:

• Links compensation directly to value creation

• References "we" to maintain collaborative positioning

• Asks them to justify their framework, not defend your worth

As covered in Master the Moment When Leverage Becomes Reality, leverage is psychological before it's tactical. Your presentation created psychological commitment. Now transfer that momentum:

"I'm ready to decline my other opportunities and focus entirely on our success here. What can we do to make this package exciting for everyone?"

After they present their initial offer, apply the principle from The Psychology Behind Every Salary Question:

"I appreciate your confidence in me as your leader. Let me review it in context of what we'll be building together and we’ll discuss next steps on X. I look forward to working with you and the team."

Then go silent for 24-48 hours—sometimes longer (controlling the timing is situationally nuanced). This silence often triggers improved offers without any counter from you.

Your Implementation Checklist

Before You Present:

• Read the latest industry buzz.

• Research individual panel members' backgrounds

  • Try our interview prep tools to get up to 40 pages of deep research and question ideas to tackle your trickiest evaluators.

• Prepare 3-5 strategic questions for each person

  • Put yourself in their shoes and play devil’s advocate against yourself.

• Practice transitioning from presentation to consultation mode

• Calm your body language and be deliberate and slow.

During Your Presentation:

• Use names and reference previous conversations within first 10 minutes

• Ask for input after every major point

• Watch for Silent Evaluators and engage them directly

• Shift to "when we work together" language in final 30 minutes

After Your Presentation:

• Send individual follow-up notes within 24 hours

  • 2-3 sentences tops. No pontificating.

• Reference specific insights each person shared

• Offer additional frameworks or resources mentioned

The Psychological Shift

Remember: You're not there to get hired, today. You're there to become the only option they can envision.

When you execute this framework, you transform from one of six candidates into their strategic advisor who happens to be available for hire.

While your competition delivers presentations, you facilitate strategic discoveries. While they seek approval, you provide value. While they hope to impress, you engineer inevitability.

This is how you command premium compensation and C-suite positioning—not through better slides, but through superior influence architecture.

As discussed in Outperform 99% of Executives in Interviews, the difference between executives who command premium compensation and those who accept standard offers often comes down to mastering these final-round dynamics.

Execute this framework, and you don't just win the role—you position yourself as the inevitable choice while creating maximum leverage for everything that follows.

And to our friend who submitted this question for us all, thank you for your courage. We’re all rooting for your success next week. Now go get ‘em!

UPDATE - Our reader messaged me a week after this article came out with an emphatic - “I GOT THE OFFER!” - Congratulations 🎉🎉🎉

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