AEO & Sales Masterclass
Answer engine optimisation joined to the sales process that has to catch it.
For heads of marketing & sales · HRD Corp claimable
Is AI recommending you,
or your competitor?
Your buyers ask for a shortlist before they contact anyone. Two or three names come back. Being one of them costs nothing in media spend, and it is decided by things your team can fix in a day.
Ten seconds to find out: open ChatGPT and ask it for the best company in your category in Malaysia. Whatever comes back is what your buyers are seeing.
Join 30+ companies who have learned how to use AI to bring in better-quality inbound leads, without spending more on ads.
Not claiming HRD Corp?
Secure an early bird seat
RM900 usual RM1,750 Save RM850
Pay online and your seat is confirmed straight away.
Pay online and your seat is confirmed straight away.
Claiming for HRD Corp?
Request a proposal
RM1,100 per seat, claimable in full under SBL-Khas.
Quotation, invoice and the submission pack for your HR team. Usually back the same working day.
Quotation, invoice and the submission pack for your HR team. Usually back the same working day.
A full-day intake in Kuala Lumpur. Marketing and sales teams, laptops open, working on their own brands.
Day 1
Your team spends one day on it
Not a seminar. They audit where your brand currently stands in AI answers, agree the positioning, and build a publishable asset before 5pm, on your own site and funnel. Claimable in full through HRD Corp, so it costs the budget nothing.
Day 2
They start building, not planning
They come back with a written 30-day plan and the first pieces already built. No three-week internal debate about positioning, no waiting on an agency scope. Work starts Tuesday morning.
Day 30
You have something to show
Run the same questions your buyers run and see whether your company is named now. Screenshot it. That is a before-and-after you can put in front of your MD without a single attribution argument.
One of your competitors will be in those names. Most Malaysian companies in your category haven't started yet, which makes this the cheapest it will ever be to get in. Being late costs a great deal more than being early.
94%
of business buyers used AI during their most recent purchase
Forrester · ~18,000 buyers
41%
start vendor research inside an AI tool — search is only used to double-check
Semrush
2.2×
more clicks when AI cites you, versus when it doesn't
Seer · 5.47M queries
Teams we've trained
350+ professionals trained across Malaysia, Singapore and beyond — pharmaceutical, real estate, technology, education, healthcare and B2B services.
Real estate & property
- Sime Darby Property
- PropNex Malaysia, Singapore & Sarawak
- ERA Singapore
- MIEA Malaysian Institute of Estate Agents
- Naim Properties Sarawak
- Hartamas Real Estate
- Cornerstone Estate
- WEREG Properties
- CSX Properties
Corporate, tech & education
- INSEAD MBA C-suite & senior executives, 3 countries
- Swinburne University
- ClickAsia 27 marketers, 70+ e-commerce brands
- Internet Alliance Malaysia member companies
- HRD Corp National Training Week
- VLAN Asia
- ISUN Education Singapore
- English Ninjas Singapore
- Momenta · Compas · Mindgeist
Kenny’s AEO & SEO clients
- AWS
- HubSpot
- MacPaw & Setapp
- Kili Technologies
- Uptech
- Content and AEO engagements, not training. 100+ technical articles across DevOps, AI/ML and cybersecurity.
Most recent cohort — 30 July 2026, with Internet Alliance
WPP Media
AIMS Data Centre
Fiuu (Razer Merchant Services)
Supplycart
Delta Sama Jaya
Trapper Media Group
Accordia Global
Monster Interactive
Infinity Consulting Technology
iDCP Systems
Webplus Digital
AC2 Wave
Gard Inc
Pertiwi Oligo
Tupai
Not a mock-up. Real answers, this month.
This is what your buyer sees now.
Four searches, four industries, taken from Google's AI Mode in Malaysia. Every one hands over a finished shortlist. None of them require the buyer to visit a single website.
Industrial property
industrial project in klang valley best buy
Named locations, named developments, price per square foot. The buyer has a shortlist and a budget before any agent knows they exist.
B2B software
best accounting software in malaysia
One vendor named first, with "Best For" written for them. Every competitor not on this list is invisible to this buyer.
Healthcare
best dental clinic in kuala lumpur
Four clinics named on a map with a one-line verdict each. No website visited, no enquiry form, no record of the ones left out.
Consumer & retail
best pet supplements for old cats
Specific products, specific brands, cited to one source. The purchase decision is effectively made inside the answer.
What these four have in common
A verdict, not a list of links. Named companies, named products, named prices. And no trace of the businesses that were not mentioned, which is why this loss never shows up in anyone's reporting.
What your team will understand
The shift, explained in a way a marketing team can act on.
Two practitioners, no theory for its own sake. What is actually working right now, and what is being oversold.
01
Why ranking isn't enough anymore
Pages sitting at position one on Google that AI never mentions. Why it happens, and what AI is looking for instead.
02
What actually makes AI pick a brand
The three things that move the needle — and the two things that get sold constantly but don't work.
03
Why your positioning is the real problem
When your website, LinkedIn and proposals say different things, AI doesn't decide who you are. It just picks someone clearer.
04
Where the money actually shows up
Not traffic. The shortlist. Why being mentioned matters more than being visited, and what that does to your pipeline.
Who's teaching
Two halves of the same problem.
Part 1 · AEO
Kenny Lee
Search “Malaysia top AEO speaker” and Google's AI names him. The trainer Internet Alliance Malaysia brought in to teach its member companies AEO. SEO content engineer, 11 years in the field, writing for AWS, HubSpot, MacPaw, Setapp and Uptech — over 100 technical articles across DevOps, AI/ML and cybersecurity. An electronics engineer by training, which is why he builds AEO as a system rather than a list of tips. He moved brands to AI-first content before most agencies noticed the shift.
Part 2 · Content & funnel
Stephanie Lam
Carried a quota before she carried a media budget. MNC pharma sales at GSK, Sanofi and Duopharma with multiple Gold Awards at 110%+ of target, then performance marketing for high-ticket services across Malaysia and Singapore. Meta Certified Media Buying Professional, HRD Corp accredited, keynote at MAREC 2024. She still runs her own ad budget and closes her own deals — she isn't reading someone else's slides. Trains in English, Mandarin and Bahasa Malaysia.
Sales floor
MNC pharma at GSK, Sanofi, Duopharma and Mead Johnson — multiple Gold Awards at 110%+ of target
Started in
Singapore — performance marketing for high-ticket services, before bringing it back to Malaysia
In-house
Head of Content, Hartamas Real Estate — rebuilt content and search, inbound leads up 450% in three months
Now
Fractional CMO. Advises brands, consultants and business owners on offer design, positioning and the marketing-to-sales system
Media budget
Meta Certified Media Buying Professional. Runs live ad budgets across Malaysia and Singapore — 74 ads tested in one two-month campaign
Results
RM30M+ in client sales · 4–26× return on ad spend · cost per lead from $300 to $17 · +450% inbound leads in three months
Classroom
HRD Corp accredited. Sime Darby Property, PropNex, Naim, ClickAsia, INSEAD MBA C-suites, Swinburne — 350+ professionals across MY, SG, UK and US
Stage
Keynote at MAREC 2024, Malaysia's largest real estate convention · HRD Corp National Training Week · Internet Alliance
Recognition
Top 2 LinkedIn sales creator, Malaysia · trains in English, Mandarin and Bahasa Malaysia
Proof, of the self-demonstrating kind
Ask Google who Malaysia's top AEO speaker is.
Google AI Overview, August 2026. He teaches brands how to get cited by AI. This is AI citing him.
Kenny walking a room through a live AI citation case study — Internet Alliance, July 2026
Internet Alliance Malaysia, 30 July 2026. Same two trainers, same format.
Find yourself here
It isn't happening to “businesses”. It's happening to yours.
The shift shows up differently depending on what you sell. Here is what it looks like in each of the industries we work with most.
B2B tech, IT services, SaaS
41%
of business buyers now start vendor research inside an AI tool, and only use a search engine to validate what it already told them. Your shortlist is written before you know the buyer exists.
Property & real estate
91.6%
of agents don't appear in AI answers at all. The top 1% capture 47% of every citation. It's a land grab, and it closes as your competitors move.
Clinics, dental, healthcare
2 in 3
patients researching providers in AI hit wrong information — wrong address, wrong phone, wrong insurance accepted. 60% never verify it. That's an operations problem wearing a marketing costume.
Education & training
18%
of students have already removed an institution from their shortlist because of what AI told them. Nobody in admissions saw it happen.
Insurance & financial services
9 in 10
“do I need cyber liability for a 40-person firm” questions are now answered by AI. “Insurance near me” barely triggers it. You're not losing the application form. You're losing the top of the funnel.
Supplements, retail & consumer
92–97%
of “is it worth it” and “how much does it cost in KL” searches now return an AI answer. Nobody asks AI to book a haircut — but everybody asks whether the treatment is worth it.
Consulting & professional services
3 names
is what a buyer gets when they ask for the best firm in your category. Credentials don't help if you're not one of the three. Ten links became three names.
Manufacturing & industrial
92%
of AI-using industrial buyers say it shaped their vendor shortlist. Long RFQ cycles, anonymous research, and a single recovered enquiry worth six figures.
The pattern
In every one of these, the loss is invisible. There's no bounced email, no lost pitch, no line in your analytics. The enquiry simply never arrives — because the decision happened somewhere you weren't.
Why this isn't only an SEO problem
AI doesn't read your website. It reads the internet about you.
Roughly 85% of non-paid AI citations come from third-party sources, not from the brand's own site. Which means fixing your website is necessary and nowhere near sufficient.
Your site
Crawlable, answer-first, and consistent with everything else. Where most people stop.
LinkedIn & YouTube
High-authority platforms AI already trusts. If you're absent, you're absent from its evidence.
Reddit & forums
Among the most-cited sources in AI answers — and the hardest to fake.
Reviews & directories
Where AI checks whether the claims on your site are true.
Your ads
Content warms them, ads reach them. Neither works as well alone.
The real problem
Being present, consistent and specific across six platforms is a full-time job. Most teams manage two and let the rest drift — which is exactly when AI starts seeing two different companies.
Why we build it in Claude
Once your positioning, customer language and funnel are loaded once, one interview or one long video becomes a month of content across every platform — on message, in your voice, without rewriting each piece by hand.
And then
AI made content cheap. It made trust expensive.
The masterclass gives you the foundation — why this is happening, what works, and what to stop paying for. That part is genuinely useful on its own, and it's yours for free.
What it can't do is look at your website, your positioning and your funnel and tell you which three things to fix first. That takes a room, a workbook, and someone looking over your shoulder.
The implementation workshop
One full day. You leave with it built.
Signal & Source AEO Masterclass + Content Marketing That Converts. Not a talk — a working session with your own business on the table.
A previous full-day intake. This one is capped at 40.
Next dates
11 & 25 Sept · 15 Oct · 10 Nov
Time
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Where
Kuala Lumpur · in person
Per seat
RM1,100 · claimable
Seats
Capped at 40
Grant approval
3 working days · before training
Format
57% hands-on
Pick a date
Closing soon
11 Sept
Thursday · 9am–5pm · KL
Only if your grant is already moving. Approval must be in three working days before.
★ Best next date
25 Sept
Thursday · 9am–5pm · KL
Same programme, same rate, and enough runway to get the HRD Corp claim approved without rushing your HR team.
Also running
15 Oct
Wednesday · 9am–5pm · KL
Same programme, same rates. Useful if your HRD Corp approval needs more runway.
Also running
10 Nov
Tuesday · 9am–5pm · KL
Same programme, same rates. Furthest out, easiest to get signed off.
Tell us which date when you request the proposal. Seats are capped at 40 for every intake, and September fills first.
What it costs your company
HRD Corp SBL-Khas — claimable in full
RM1,100 per seat
Normally RM1,750 · Save RM650
Your levy covers it, so the cash cost to the business is nil. Invoice is issued on grant approval and settled by HRD Corp e-disbursement. Course approval no. 10001743052, MyCoID 36116167453. We send the quotation, invoice, course outline, objectives, methodology and both trainer profiles as one pack, and we handle the claim documentation.
In-house at your office is also claimable, up to 25 people, with pre-training discovery so the exercises run on your real brands and funnels. Ask for a group quotation.
Request a Proposal
How it works. You request the proposal, your HR submits the standard SBL-Khas application using our documents, and we hold the seat once you confirm the grant is approved. The grant must be approved before the training day, and for public workshops that only needs to be three working days before, so a late decision is still workable. We can't seat a claim still pending on the morning, and if that happens we move your people to the next intake at no cost.
No levy behind you?
If you're an owner, a freelancer or a team of under ten with no HRD Corp levy to draw on, you can still come. Same room, same workbook, same templates.
RM900 per seat · usual RM1,750
Pay online, confirm my seat
Seat confirmed the moment payment clears. Question first? WhatsApp us
What you leave with, and what it costs you otherwise
Finished, in the room
If you do it alone
An AI visibility audit of your own brand
3–4 hours of guesswork across four engines
Your entity map — how AI should recognise you
Most businesses never do this at all
A retrieval-ready content asset, built from scratch
Two weeks of drafts and rewrites
A funnel audit with your biggest leak named
Usually found by accident, months later
Your positioning statement, peer-reviewed
Three weeks of internal debate. Done by lunch.
The customer-language extraction that feeds all of it
Guesswork, or a market research budget
Your 30-day content and funnel action plan
Written before you leave, not “when things calm down”
Workbook, templates and prompt library
Yours permanently
★ Bonus session — included
Using AI to write content that actually converts
Your team leaves able to produce content that builds trust and turns leads into sales, instead of AI output that sounds like everyone else and has to be rewritten anyway.
Taught by Stephanie Lam — 15 years in content and client acquisition, former Head of Content at Hartamas Real Estate where the rebuild lifted inbound leads 450% in three months. A practitioner who has had to hit the number, not a trainer teaching from a slide deck.
It starts with customer language, not brand language. We extract how your customers actually describe their problem, from your own reviews and testimonials, and build everything on those words. That single change took one client's cost per lead from $300 to $17.
What we ask of you
Bring a laptop. Bring your own business. Do the work. Every exercise runs on your real website, your real funnel and your real copy, so there is nothing to watch passively. If you're coming to observe rather than build, this isn't the right room and we'd rather say so now.
✓ HRD Corp claimable — SBL-Khas
Course approval no. 10001743052. Certificate of Attendance issued to everyone who completes the full day, plus attendance records and completed feedback forms for your claim file. Programme category: Digital Marketing / AI & Technology / Content Strategy / Business Development. Delivered in English. Trainers: Stephanie Lam (HRD Corp accredited) and Kenny Lee (TechToWords).
On budget
You have already paid for this.
The levy is there to be used. The only question is what you point it at.
Have you used your levy this year?
It leaves your payroll every month whether you use it or not. Most companies spend it on whatever training is easiest to arrange, and the marketing team rarely sees any of it.
This is a chance to point it at something your buyers actually changed, and to upskill the team who carry your pipeline. Run by practitioners who have had to hit the number themselves, not trainers teaching from a deck.
The day
9 to 5, and you're working most of it.
Roughly 57% of the day is hands-on exercises, discussion, live demonstration and Q&A. Mini-lectures are capped at ten minutes.
Morning · Part 1
Signal & Source AEO Masterclass
with Kenny Lee · 3 hours
9:00Welcome & framing
9:15Decoding the disruptionThe zero-click crisis. What AEO actually is. Share of Model as the new metric. Activity: live AI visibility check on your brand.
10:10Engineering influenceInside the LLM black box — contextual relevance, authority signals, verification. Activity: entity mapping.
11:15Architecting AEO contentSearch content vs retrieval-friendly content. Live demo + build a retrieval-ready asset from scratch.
12:15Lunch
Afternoon · Part 2
Positioning for AI Search
with Stephanie Lam · 3.5 hours
1:15Why AI can't recommend youIt reads your website, LinkedIn, Google profile and proposals as one thing. When they disagree, it picks someone clearer. Live audit of your own four sources.
2:00Customer language beats brand languageWhy “convenient nutrition” loses to “I finally stopped skipping breakfast.” Extract your customers' actual words from your own reviews.
2:50The questions that get you citedComparison, cost and decision questions — where AI answers live, and where buying happens. Fifteen buyer questions ranked, against what you answer publicly today.
3:40Your positioning statementWrite it, score it, peer review it. One sentence that works on every platform.
4:15Where it has to be consistentSite, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, reviews. 85% of AI citations come from third-party sources.
4:40Your 30-day planThen a commitment round — everyone states three specific actions out loud.
Who this is built for
Malaysian mid-market. Considered purchases.
Companies whose buyers research vendors before any sales conversation, which means AI is now doing that research for them.
Technology & IT
Where the buyer researches hardest
- IT services and MSPs
- Systems integrators
- Cybersecurity
- Cloud, hosting, data centres
- B2B SaaS
Services & considered purchases
Where trust decides the deal
- Consulting and B2B advisory
- Property and real estate
- Education and healthcare
- Insurance and financial services
- Manufacturing and industrial
What the first cohort said
Our first cohort, 30 July. Unedited.
19 responses collected at the end of the day. Their words, their company names.
“Given my non-IT background, I found the course very easy to understand. It is also highly practical, with hands-on exercises that can be applied immediately, helping to reinforce and retain the concepts taught.”
WPP MediaMedia planning & buying
“Gaining practical knowledge about AEO, and understanding how content can be optimised for AI-driven search.”
Fiuu — Razer Merchant Services
“AEO is explained in a very easy to understand manner. Many prompt templates and frameworks are prepared and shared with us.”
Trapper Media Group
“Real life experience, not text book.”
AC2 Wave
The numbers from that day
89%
agreed the course helped them work more effectively
8.9
average satisfaction score out of 10
✓HRD Corp registered training provider — SBL-KHAS claimable
✓Member, Internet Alliance Malaysia
✓Keynote, MAREC 2024
✓MyCoID 36116167453 · course approval 10001743052
End of a training day.
Questions
Before you commit.
Isn't AEO just SEO with a new name?
About 80% of it is solid SEO fundamentals, and nobody should charge you separately for that. The other 20% is being mentioned on the platforms AI trusts, and structuring content so AI can lift a clean answer out of it. We cover both, and we'll tell you which your business needs first.
What if 11 September doesn't work for us?
Same programme on 25 September, 15 October and 10 November. Same hours, same city, same rates — just tell us which date.
Can I claim this under HRD Corp?
Yes, under SBL-KHAS at the RM1,100 rate. Rise Digital Enterprise is a registered HRD Corp training provider, MyCoID 36116167453, course approval no. 10001743052. Email connect@risesystemconsulting.com or WhatsApp us and we'll send the quotation, invoice, course outline and full submission pack.
Approval must be granted before the training day — we can't seat a pending claim. For public workshops the grant only needs to be approved three working days before training, so a late decision is still workable. Send us your details and we'll turn the quotation around the same day.
Can't I just learn this from YouTube?
Yes, and we'll send you the reading list. The catch is that the advice out there contradicts itself, and what matters for a clinic is nothing like what matters for a systems integrator. Most people who go it alone spend six months on the wrong things.
Is one day enough?
It is now, because we changed it. We used to run AEO and the full content system in one day and people told us it was too fast. They were right, so we split it. This day has one job: getting your brand clear enough that AI can describe and recommend it. Building the production system afterwards is a separate day.
A laptop and your own website are all you need to bring. We'll send pre-work a few days before.
11 & 25 Sept · 15 Oct · 10 Nov · 9AM–5PM · Kuala Lumpur
Start with the proposal.
You are not committing to anything. Get the quotation and course outline in front of your HR team, see whether the grant clears, and decide then.
What lands in your inbox
- Quotation and invoice on your company details
- Full course outline, learning objectives and methodology breakdown
- Both trainer profiles and accreditation
- Course approval number and everything else the SBL-Khas form asks for
STEP 01
You request itOne short form, or WhatsApp us. Back to you usually the same working day.
STEP 02
HR submitsStandard SBL-Khas application using our documents.
STEP 03
Grant approvedNeeds approval three working days before the training day.
STEP 04
They attend9am to 5pm in KL. Certificate issued on completion.
Course approval 10001743052 · SBL-Khas · 40 seats per intake · grant approved 3 working days before training
P.S.One thing worth doing before you decide anything. Open ChatGPT and ask it to recommend the best company in your category in Malaysia. Then ask about your closest competitor. Whatever comes back is the honest state of your AI visibility today, and it costs nothing to find out. If your name is already there, you may not need us. Most people find it isn't.