There was once a time when sales reps took the lead on B2B sales — but today, buyers are in the driver’s seat. Modern buyers come to the table more informed than ever and expect outstanding experiences throughout the purchase journey, and they won’t hesitate to look elsewhere if their expectations are unmet.
Sales reps must be ready and able to deliver outstanding experiences — and pivot as necessary to meet customers’ ever-evolving needs and expectations. Today, innovative revenue organizations are incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) role plays into their sales training programs to ensure sellers are up for the challenge.
Traditional Role-Plays Are Effective – But They’re Hard To Scale
Sales training helps prepare sellers to tackle any deal that comes their way. But simply attending a training doesn’t mean a sales rep has mastered a new skill or information. Gartner research found sales reps forget 70% of the information they learn within a week of training.
Sales reps need plenty of opportunities to practice their skills to ensure they’re ready to apply them in the field. The good news is that most sales reps are willing and able to practice — so long as their practice opportunities are engaging and interactive. Role-plays fit the bill.
But while role-plays are a great way for sellers to practice their pitches, they’re difficult to manage at scale. That’s because sales managers are stretched thin, leaving them with little to no time to review pitches and provide constructive feedback across their entire team. Furthermore, different managers have different styles, leading to an inconsistent experience. It’s no wonder why role-play initiatives at large organizations often fail.
Innovative revenue organizations must identify ways to solve this problem — and AI is the answer.
How Top Revenue Organizations Incorporate AI Into Role-Plays
Today, there are two key powerful ways top revenue organizations leverage AI to deliver realistic, effective and consistent role-play opportunities at scale.
Delivering Real-Time Feedback On Pitches
In the past, a sales rep would deliver a role-play in real time — either in person or remotely. With the rise in remote work, many organizations enable sales reps to record pitches, which they can then submit for assessment and feedback. However, sales managers often sit on these pitches because they simply can’t find the time to review them. This leaves sales reps without the feedback to boost their skills and improve sales outcomes.
Today, winning revenue organizations leverage AI to deliver real-time feedback to sales reps. Sellers record and submit their role-plays, and AI analyzes the pitch to provide a score and practical feedback. Sellers can then use that feedback to submit new versions until they’ve perfected their pitch.
This AI-driven approach empowers sales reps — while saving sales managers’ time. Recently, a large Fortune 100 tech company launched a pitch contest to coincide with a new product launch and received more than 6,000 pitches from 3,500 sellers. The company used AI to provide textual, keyword and emotional feedback for each pitch. This enabled sellers to perfect their pitches, saving more than 30 weeks of sales managers’ time.
Providing Realistic, Dynamic Practice Opportunities
Each selling scenario has two sides: The buyer and the seller. While sellers can practice their skills via a one-sided role-play, immersive learning and practice experiences are better.
A growing number of revenue enablement teams are incorporating interactive AI role-plays into their enablement programs to allow sales reps to practice their skills in realistic, dynamic scenarios. But what exactly does this look like?
Enablement teams create role-play scenarios, and they also assign titles, personality and behavioral traits to an AI bot. For example, a bot may be a Director of IT who is extroverted and budget-conscious. Bots are designed to react and respond in a very human-like way.
Then, sales reps can practice their skills in realistic, life-like selling scenarios on their own time. There’s no need to wait for a manager or a peer to practice with. Furthermore, sales reps don’t have to face the pressure of practicing with the person who employs them.
AI provides feedback and suggestions throughout the role-play on topics including:
- Objection handling; and
- Use of filler words.
Sales reps can then incorporate this feedback to “beat the bot.”
With AI role-plays, sales reps can hone their skills in a safe environment — before money is on the line. Furthermore, AI role-plays allow revenue organizations to deliver consistent role-play experiences at scale.
It’s Time To Leverage AI To Deliver Engaging Sales Role-Play Experiences At Scale
The static, dull sales training of the past will no longer cut it: Modern sellers expect immersive learning and practice experiences.
It’s time to incorporate AI role-plays into your sales enablement strategy. By leveraging AI, you’ll be equipped to deliver dynamic training that meets sellers’ expectations and helps ensure they’ve mastered the skills and behaviors needed to be successful in the field.
Helen Waite is a Principal of Product at Mindtickle, a sales enablement and revenue productivity platform. Waite leads GTM messaging, research and product evolution for Mindtickle’s revenue enablement solutions. She has a rich product marketing background in healthcare and e-commerce SaaS startups and traditional marketing experience in government tech.
