Tibor Végvári, entrepreneur and founder of Sales Minds and the Hungarian Sales Summit, told the podcast A nagy AI-sztori that artificial intelligence can no longer be avoided in business. He said companies now face the same fundamental question: how quickly and how well can they integrate AI into their operations. Early adopters who experiment with AI may pull significantly ahead of those who wait or resist.
The podcast’s regular expert guest was Aczél Petra, communication researcher and professor at Széchenyi István Egyetem. Végvári warned that change goes beyond automating internal processes: companies must also prepare for a world in which an AI agent — not necessarily the human customer — may approach service providers on the customer’s behalf. In that scenario, businesses will eventually have to convince not just the human buyer but also their digital representative.
Végvári uses AI and AI-based apps extensively in his own work: building websites, editing videos, creating graphics and producing content are all tasks he handles with AI. He said that today a single person can build the basic infrastructure of an entire event brand that previously would have required multiple external specialists or a small team.
However, he stressed that this does not erase the value of human relationships. On the contrary, personal meetings may become a premium product in sales. While many meetings, webinars, webshops and customer interactions have moved online, genuine face-to-face conversations have become rarer. Trust remains central in sales: Végvári argues that a purchase requires three things — sufficient information, appropriate trust and the buyer’s financial ability. For some products, these can be developed entirely digitally; for higher-value or more personal purchases, seeing, touching or experiencing the item can still play a decisive role.
On the labor-market impact of AI, Végvári spoke more bluntly: he believes AI will "clean out" professionals who are not good enough or not sufficiently committed. He mentioned graphic designers, videographers, photographers and copywriters by name, and added that in the long run virtually every profession should prepare for change. That does not necessarily mean AI will replace the best specialists; rather, technology may increase the value of those who create real added value. If an AI can produce a mediocre-quality job in minutes, the gap between average and outstanding performance becomes much more visible.
He also noted that the pace of competition has accelerated: what was an impressive AI novelty yesterday — for example, AI avatars — can quickly become clichéd. Today every company, presenter and content creator competes for the same scarce resource: attention.
Végvári emphasized that individual knowledge still matters in using AI effectively. He described prompt engineering as a skill where the user’s own "handwriting" can appear: the more someone knows about literature, philosophy, business or any other field, the more precisely they can steer the AI and the more unique and hard-to-reproduce results they can obtain. In this respect, AI does not necessarily equalize knowledge gaps and in some cases may widen them.
This is especially important for young people entering the labor market. Végvári said that anyone aiming to succeed in business cannot afford not to educate themselves, follow innovations and try to understand new tools. There is no free lunch: those who do not invest time, energy, learning and even subscriptions in AI development will ultimately pay with their lagging behind.
The change already affects assistant roles as well: Végvári is testing an AI agent that can scan his emails, prioritize messages and draft replies. If a system can decide what needs immediate reaction, what can wait and what can be ignored, it raises the question of what tasks remain for junior assistants or secretaries.
While AI increasingly takes over routine tasks, Végvári still sees strong value in personal contacts. He regularly meets company leaders informally for coffee because such unstructured conversations can surface different knowledge than a 25-minute online meeting. Those situations reveal who is trying which new app, which AI agent they are testing, and what new solutions they have discovered for particular problems.
Key moments and timestamps from the podcast episode:
- 02:33 AI is no longer avoidable for businesses
- 06:25 What remains human in sales?
- 16:39 How a brand builder uses AI day-to-day
- 19:07 Which jobs might AI squeeze out?
- 21:13 AI trends, the race for attention and generational differences
- 29:37 Market advantage, prompt engineering and individual knowledge
- 37:06 What young people need to know for the AI-era business world
- 40:24 What will happen to junior roles?
Listeners interested in the full episode can find it on the podcast’s distribution platforms.
