How I used LLMs to hack into enablement: Confessions of a webinar host

The night everything changed

It was 11:30 pm, and I was staring at my screen, paralyzed by the blinking cursor. The next day, I had to host a webinar for nearly 200 attendees on our new AI analytics offering.

The second dry run had just finished - but the slides didn’t look convincing to me. My script felt a bit robotic, and tomorrow's audience would comprise a variety of roles.

How could I possibly engage such a diverse audience; especially on a virtual platform?

As a webinar host, my job is to turn virtual events into engaging stories. I’ve spent my entire life doing this and I’ve always loved covering tech waves. Over the last 20 years, I’ve covered everything from GPRS to Generative AI.

I’ve been told I’m good at my job, but lately attendance was dipping, and post-webinar conversions had flatlined.

That night, desperate, I Googled “AI tools for sales content.” That’s when I fell into the rabbit hole of Large Language Models (LLMs).

Chapter 1: The first experiment - from generic to genius

The next morning, I took a gamble. I fed an AI model my dry webinar script and typed:

“Rewrite this for a mixed audience of tech experts and sales leaders. Add storytelling, relatable analogies, and three humor breaks.”

What came back was magic.

• My old opening: “Welcome to our webinar on AI analytics offering.”

• LLM rewrite: “Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt like your data is a toddler - messy, unpredictable, and occasionally throwing tantrums. Today, we’ll teach it to behave.”

I used the script verbatim. Some attendees laughed in the Teams chat. Questions poured in. Post-event survey scores jumped from 68 to 82%.

But the real win? 89% of attendees stayed till the end of the webinar - double the average I was scoring recently.

That’s when I realized: LLMs weren’t just chatbots. They were audience whisperers.

Chapter 2: Personalization at scale - the “Segment-of-One” webinar

My next challenge: attendees were tuning out because content felt irrelevant. A healthcare rep didn’t care about banking case studies, and vice versa.

I pitched a wild idea to myself: “What if I run one webinar, but personalize every (or most) attendee’s experience in real time?”

Using an LLM, I:

Pre-loaded industry-specific talking points, case studies, and pain points.
Played with the LLM to scan attendee profiles (job titles, LinkedIn activity, past interactions).
Created dynamic slides that auto-adjusted content based on the audience’s data.

The result?

A retail manager saw slides on “reducing cart abandonment with predictive analytics.”
A healthcare VP saw “HIPAA-compliant patient data forecasts.”
During Q&A, the LLM suggested tailored responses: “John, since you’re in manufacturing, here’s how we helped AutoCorp cut supply chain delays by 30%…”

Post-webinar, one executive emailed: “How did you know exactly what my team was struggling with?”

Well, I didn’t - the LLM did!

Chapter 3: The 24-Hour follow-up revolution

Our sales team’s biggest complaint? “Webinars leads go cold because follow-ups take days.”

I had wasted hours saying: “Thanks for attending! Here’s a recap…”

So I built an LLM-powered workflow:

Transcription & Analysis: Used an LLM to transcribe the webinar, and another, to summarize the key moments.
Hyper-Personalized Emails: The LLM cross-referenced attendee engagement data (questions asked, poll responses, time spent) with their profile.
Auto-Generated Content: Post webinar email included a custom clip (“You asked about scalability - watch this 2-minute segment”) and a tailored proposal.

Here’s an example for an attendee who’d asked about data security but left early:

“Hi Priya - You dipped out before our deep dive on encryption (no judgment - we’ve all had calendar clashes!). Here’s the clip, plus how we helped Acme Corp. block 12K cyber threats last quarter. Want to discuss?”

Result: Attendees felt they’re heard. Reply rates spiked. Post-webinar engagement intensified.

Chapter 4: When the LLM outsmarted me

Not every experiment was a win for me.

For a webinar on financial analytics, I relied on an LLM to handle live Q&A. Bad idea. A prospect asked: “How does your tool handle real-time stock market volatility?”

The LLM suggested: “Our algorithm uses quantum-inspired metaheuristics to…”

The chat exploded: “What does that even mean??”

I had to jump in: “Let me translate: It’s like having a weather forecast for your stock portfolio.” Relief emojis started floating on the screen.

The lesson? LLMs are brilliant collaborators, but terrible soloists.

Chapter 5: The hybrid hosting model

Today, my workflow looks like this (besides intense preparation with my guests):

Pre-Webinar:

Use AI to analyze past attendee data to predict hot topics.
Generate 10 title options (“From Data Chaos to Clarity: 3 Secrets Top CFOs Swear By”).
Create a provoking webinar opening – after all, I have less than 5 minutes to grab the attention.

During Webinar:

Monitor chat sentiment. (When engagement dips: “Pause and ask about their biggest data pain point.”)
Generate polls (e.g., “Which keeps you up at night: data silos or inaccurate forecasts?”).

Post-Webinar:

Use AI for lead scores (e.g., “Sarah asked 3 questions + downloaded the presentation = Interested attendee”).
Draft 30-second personalized video summaries for top attendees.

The impact? Webinars went from a “nice-to-have” to a leading platform for driving engagement.

The dark side: Ethics and overload

The backlash hit during a brainstorming session. A rep complained: “An attendee said my email felt… robotic. Turns out I’d sent the LLM draft without editing it.”

We’d become too reliant. Prospects started sniffing out AI-generated content: “Your emails are too perfect. Are you even real?”

So we set new rules:

The 70/30 Split: LLMs handle 70% of the grunt work; humans add 30% personality (inside jokes, voice notes, custom memes).
Transparency: Added a line to emails: “P.S. My AI assistant helped draft this, but I’m real! Hit reply and test me :)”

Engagement rebounded.

The future: AI co-hosts and holograms?

I am testing an LLM-powered avatar for an upcoming webinar in three time zones. It will deliver the keynote in English, then answer questions in Spanish and Mandarin.

But the real kicker? What if a BU leader asks, “Can the AI host a workshop for our team?”

At times I wonder – can I create “AI-Cloned Workshops,” where my LLM twin (trained on my past webinars) delivers customized sessions. And I step in only for strategic Q&A?

It’s a bit scary… but thrilling!

The takeaway: LLMs didn’t replace me - they redefined me

Until I knew about LLMs, I was a talking head. Today, I’m a hybrid orchestrator - part storyteller, part researcher, part AI wrangler.

I don’t think AI will steal my job; it however stole the worst parts of my job. I no longer waste nights thinking about my talk-track. Instead, I focus on what humans do best: creating connections.

So, if you’re hosting webinars with the same old slides and follow-ups, ask yourself:

What if your next script wrote itself?
What if every attendee felt like the webinar was made just for them?
What if your follow-ups landed like handwritten notes, not spam?

That’s the power of LLMs in sales enablement - not to automate, but to amplify.

The future of enablement isn’t human vs. AI. It’s humans with AI. And trust me, you want to be on this side of the revolution.

About the author: Amit Ghosal, Senior Director, Sales Enablement at Virtusa

In a world of back-to-back meetings, “just another webinar” isn’t an option.

Amit is not a hype artist. He is a webinar moderator who cuts through the business nonsense and extracts the signal from the noise. Over the past 20 years, Amit has mastered the art of turning canned corporate scripts into conversations that matter. He is a Swiss Army knife, skilled at nudging experts out of their comfort zones and audiences into the conflict. Amit doesn’t chase viral moments. He engineers them by asking the questions everyone’s searching, but few are voicing.

People work with Amit because he refuses to let webinars be forgettable. With thousands of sessions under his belt - from Fortune 500 thought-leadership panels to gritty pitch battles - he knows how to balance polish with pulse. His retention rates hover at 95% not because he’s passionate, but because he listens harder. Yes, he’ll pivot your agenda if the room demands it. And yes, he will make sure your audience leaves energized, annoyed, or enlightened - but never indifferent!