Carmen Simon, PhD

One of the biggest problems with business content is that audiences forget 90% of what you share after 2 days. And the typical goal for creating a message and sharing it with an audience is to influence their behavior in some way. But how can they act on your message if they only remember a tenth of it? How do you even know which tenth they’ll remember? Join this session to discover strategies for transforming yourself and your message into something worth noticing and remembering. To help us understand how audiences pay attention, remember content, and ultimately act on it, we look at the field of neuroscience, which reveals insights into how the brain processes information and tends to remember it, or, more often, forget it.

During the sessions, you will learn how to:

- Identify criteria that contribute to making you and your message memorable by understanding how the brain processes and remembers information.
- Direct an audience’s attention to the most critical parts of any message.
- Ensure that you and your most critical messages are memorable long-term.

Overall, participants learn how to convert neuroscience insights into practical guidelines you can use to craft content with lasting impact. This is critical because both your internal and external audiences make decisions based on what they remember, not on what they forget.

Motivating yourself, your teams, and your customers is an important ingredient in successful selling, especially as AI is putting some pressure on the worth of human capabilities. But motivation, a complex process deeply rooted in the brain, is often hard to find and sustain. The good news is that the brain is constantly active and always motivated to do something. The question is: how do you motivate it toward something with positive consequences for yourself and your buyers or teams?

In this keynote, Dr. Simon shares her neuroscience research and provides techniques to supercharge motivation. You will have a clear model of motivation based on how your brain works. Through concrete examples and engaging media, Dr. Simon will help you learn how to:

- Explain the core science behind motivating yourself and others
- Discover the most important neurobiological factors that influence healthy motivational drive and motivation deficits
- Use science-based, practical techniques to turn yourself and others into go-getters and peak performers

Change is a strategic choice but also a neurological challenge. Our brains are wired to protect routines even when we know something could be better. This creates a constant tug-of-war between the comfort of the familiar and the lure of the novel.

In this session, Dr. Carmen Simon draws from original neuroscience research to explore how the brain navigates that conflict, and how we can guide it toward embracing new directions. You’ll learn:

What happens in the brain when it is faced with change
Three science-based methods to help people adopt and sustain change
How to link business strategies to the way the brain decides its next move
Whether you’re leading a transformation, pitching an idea, or simply trying to get your team or your spouse to try something new, this session will offer you several tools to turn the biology of hesitation into the biology of action.

There has been a lot of hype lately regarding the impact of storytelling. We know the brain is "wired" for stories. However, what is it that makes a story memorable? And what is the optimal amount of narrative we can use to create impactful stories, especially when content is highly complex and scientific? After all, we want to be memorable and credible.

Join this session to learn the latest brain science research on storytelling and how to best apply it to your own business setting. You will learn how to:

- Explain, from a brain science perspective, what makes a story forgettable
- Use three science-based techniques that are mandatory to making any story memorable
- Provide the brain with elements it needs to encode a story so it is memorable long-term and actionable

Have you ever noticed a gap between what people say they will do and what they actually do after you talk to them or send them written proposals? Lack of action and follow-through have negative consequences on business outcomes, leadership, and growth. Using neuroscience, this session provides a unique approach to influencing and inspiring others to take action.

During this session, you learn how to:

- Connect three pathways to influencing others' brains and understand how to approach people's resistance to change
- Identify what your audiences’ brains find rewarding and appeal to these motivational drivers in your communication
- Use heuristics (mental shortcuts) to influence your audience’s actions in an effortless way

Every business that operates in a competitive space has a pressing goal: to stand out from the competition. But how do you address standing out from someone else from the angle of how the brain works? If you want to appear different than your competition, your buyer’s brain must be able to detect that difference. Once that difference is recognized, their brain must then appreciate or value that difference. And to get your buyers to act, you need that difference to be memorable. In this session, you will learn practical, neuroscience-based principles that enable you to:

- Help your buyer’s brain detect the difference between you and a competitor
- Create assets that are perceived by buyers as unique and valuable
- Use science-based techniques that help buyers remember your value proposition, not your competition’s

Selling is constantly marked by a hunger for authenticity. After all, who doesn’t appreciate an authentic customer-seller relationship? But it’s not so clear, scientifically, what it means for someone to be perceived as authentic. Are you more authentic when you speak your mind because you value being yourself, or when you’re choosing not to say what’s on your mind because you value kindness and politeness? There is a debate in the science of authenticity: on one hand, authenticity happens when acting in informal, often non-conformist ways, but on the other, it can happen when acting in formal, socially desirable ways.

To settle the debate, Dr. Carmen Simon, cognitive neuroscientist, shares her latest neuroscience research on how buyers perceive sellers’ authenticity in virtual contexts. During this session, you will learn practical guidelines related to these questions:

What language is most effective: formal language, free of any style and personality, or informal language, marked by temperament and even cursing? Could influence have an indecent side?
Which clothing style has a stronger impact: informal, business casual, or formal attire? Should you keep your gym clothes during a virtual meeting to exude a comfort style, or is it necessary to put on a shirt and jacket?
Which presentation modality do buyers appreciate more: formal slides, informal hand drawings, or something in between?

92% of virtual audiences attend a presentation with the intent to multitask. This session teaches the skills and techniques necessary to keep an audience focused and engaged during a virtual presentation or a webinar. Regardless of the tool you’re using (Zoom, Microsoft Teams), it is critical to adopt new habits for attracting and sustaining an audience’s attention and motivating them to listen when they are not in the same room.

The session presents a compilation of practical guidelines you can use immediately, and are applicable for both designing and delivering content, especially in virtual settings. Specifically, you will learn:

Create and structure a message best suited for virtual delivery
Minimize multitasking tendencies that are typical for virtual audiences
Handle technical elements of virtual delivery, such as backgrounds, camera, what to wear even when you're not interacting with people face-to-face

Active listening is a lot like driving: most of us believe we’re better at it than we really are. Yet, in the high-stakes B2B contexts, the ability to truly listen goes beyond skill: it's a critical tool for persuasion, trust-building, and uncovering opportunities. But what does “active listening” really look like in practice, and how does it impact both the buyer and the seller on a neurological level? From exploring how listening styles stack up against scripted questions to uncovering the hidden dynamics in a commercial context, this session will challenge what you think you know about communication. Specifically, you will learn:

What types of listening create lasting motivation, or fatigue
How active listening changes during an entire discovery call with a client
And whether a simple phrase at the end of a meeting can make or break a moment of connecting with your audience
Overall, you will learn actionable strategies to make your sales calls more persuasive, memorable, and impactful using principles rooted in brain science.

Everyone agrees that interacting well with clients or internal teams is one way to business success. But how do you keep your persuasion and business conversation skills up-to-date? Traditional ways to polish skills often rely on receiving training from a coach, but this comes with challenges for both coaches and trainees. Coordinating schedules across busy, dispersed teams can be logistically complex. The quality of coaching varies based on who’s available and how much time they have. Can AI fix some of these challenges? Join our guest, Dr. Carmen Simon, for science-based insights on AI tools to improve your sales skills with clients and internal teams. Specifically, you will learn:

The latest neuroscience findings on using AI vs. humans for coaching and learning conversations, and sales persuasion skills
Guidelines related to balancing the strengths of both humans and machines in business settings
How to add AI into your current business strategies without sacrificing quality

AI is transforming professional services, and one question looms large: when do clients still prefer human connection? Neuroscience offers a unique lens to answer this.

AI is transforming business interactions, and one question looms large: do customers prefer human connection? Neuroscience offers a unique lens to answer this. This session shares surprising findings from recent studies tracking how buyers’ brains react in real time to AI agents vs. humans, including what makes AI persuasive, where humans outperform, and why AI often wins attention, but not memory. Drawing on brain scans, voice analysis, and eye tracking, this session reveals what’s actually happening inside your customer’s mind when they interact with AI tools and what to do about it. Neuroscience research allows us to explore how factors like attention, motivation, memory, cognitive workload, and even humor impact engagement, decision-making, and trust at a level that other methods can’t match. Takeaways from this session include:

Takeaways include:

How clients think and feel when engaging with AI in professional services, and the limits of artificial charm

How humor and other human traits influence buyer engagement, and whether AI can replicate them effectively

Practical strategies to enhance buyer experiences by combining the strengths of both humans and AI

No one doubts that creativity is key to business success. It is, but a key can be turned in two directions. Turn it one way and you put people off. Turn it the other way and you can open your creative genius. How do you turn the key the proper way? Join this workshop to find out.

In this thought-provoking and richly exemplified session, you will learn a set of unusual, provocative, useful, and most important, tangible skills that enable you to:

Explore creative problem-solving independently and in teams
Apply 10 practical and immediately transferrable techniques to revamp your creativity and immediately see the impact
Add creativity to your business routines without compromising credibility

Everyone in business aspires at engaging others at some point, internally or externally. In fact, engagement is so widely addressed that it’s becoming a big word that often means very little. So let’s define it meaningfully, by using science. What does it really take for the brain to be engaged?

An intriguing approach to understanding engagement is to view it from the angle of its absence. So what do we know about the psychology of boredom? Is it possible for the brain to be bored in the age of overstimulation? The answer is yes. As scientists, we used to believe that boredom was defined by the absence of stimulation. Now we are discovering that too much stimulation can have a similar effect. So how do we prevent the brain from getting bored – therefore staying engaged with your message and your cause? The good news is that the brain does not want to stay bored for too long. From an evolutionary point, we cannot afford to stay bored. This workshop offers four evidence-based, practical guidelines, which you can use immediately to create meaningful engagement for your internal and external audiences.

Why do some customer testimonials spark immediate interest, while others fade into the noise? When designed effectively, testimonials can build trust, evoke emotion, and impact decision-making. This session, backed by groundbreaking neuroscience research, will reveal 10 essential guidelines for creating testimonials that leave a lasting impression. Join this session to learn:

How to structure testimonials to guide your audience through a compelling journey.
The role of emotion in creating connection and how even negative emotion can be a positive tool.
The surprising impact of sensory elements, contrast, and cognitive effort on attention and memory.
Through real-world examples, interactive insights, and actionable takeaways, you’ll discover how to transform testimonials into a powerful sales and marketing tool. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer, sales professional, or content creator, this session will equip you with the skills to craft customer stories that captivate and convert.

In business contexts, persuasion rarely breaks down because of bad ideas. It breaks down because of when specific messages are delivered and what happens when resistance appears. How can we understand what makes some conversations persuasive while others stall?

Instead of relying on surveys and stated preferences (which are often unreliable), this session draws on neuroscience research that captures how people implicitly process a message. Using tools such as EEG, ECG, eye-tracking, and GSR, we examine how the brain responds to different message sequences and objection-handling techniques in real business conversations. Specifically, you will learn:

How the order of information in a conversation influences buyers' attention, fatigue, motivation and term memory
Why certain objection-handling techniques increase engagement while others create resistance
Practical guidelines for structuring persuasive conversations, whether delivered by humans or AI