How to Select the Best AI-Powered Sales Training
Technology, specifically artificial intelligence (AI), could be the ally you need to create effective training and coaching experiences at scale for your sales representatives. Even though not all AI sales training solutions perform the same, the power of AI will undoubtedly lead to better results for both individuals and teams.
According to Gartner, “By 2020, 30% of all B2B companies will employ some kind of AI to augment at least one of their primary sales processes (…) Creating a high-performing sales organization is difficult with traditional training and coaching technology as coaching content and recommendations are generally delivered by role to the sales organization and do not account for individuals’ learning styles.”
The same source shows that 61% of companies piloting or deploying AI technologies indicated the benefits to their organization were “significant” and stated that AI “will improve their sales organization (with) increased efficiency, cost reduction and improved revenue streams.”
When choosing the highest-quality platform on the market, you will get the greatest benefits if it uses AI and behavioral science to evaluate and measure sales conversations. As the platform analyzes language, voice, and non-verbal queues, it captures information from uploaded or live virtual sales calls and provides detailed reports on rep performance across dozens of measured behaviors.
The AI goes a step further by creating customized sales training strategies for every individual sale rep . Besides scalability, one of the biggest advantages of AI sales training is that it can identify subtle, yet critical, communicational cues and information that would otherwise go unnoticed, such as verbal signals or body language.
Check out the following interesting use cases that may apply to your organization if you’ve been contemplating it.
Related: The Secret to Sales Success: Enable Every Rep to Meet Quota, Every Time
AI Sales Training Use Cases
Not everyone is ready to jump on the AI sales training bandwagon, primarily because it’s relatively new. Seasoned sales directors and managers often cling to the notion that sales are driven heavily by human contact, and this is not something that any machine or software can provide. Fortunately, AI is not intended to replace this relational necessity. It augments it, providing accurate and precise feedback to help reps develop their interpersonal skills to be more effective communicators and build stronger relationships.
Most likely, you have run across conversation intelligence solutions: those that use AI to analyze different communication variables and give you data-driven insights from conversations between sales agents and customers. By utilizing these results, the best platforms on the market can also provide you with personalized training and coaching paths to improve the effectiveness and productivity of all employees.
There are plenty of use cases where advanced AI technology can be beneficial. Below is a list of some of them that can help you choose a platform to apply them all in your company.
Integrations, scoring, and reporting
Integrating your AI-powered coaching platform with other software will help you sync and gather valuable data. Empower your decision-making process by connecting your solution with video conferencing tools, calendars, CRM and HR systems, learning management systems, and learning experience platforms.
For instance, when your AI sales training platform is integrated with your CRM, such as Salesforce, you get insights into how your sales coaching is impacting actual sales.
A leading tool can help you gain insights and intelligence to optimize your team’s productivity rather than accompanying them in person or listening to ongoing recordings. As much as possible, you want to automate the process to maximize time savings and devote your hours to more strategic tasks.
You can provide your team with reporting on behaviors, skills, strengths, improvement advice, and benchmarks to increase their presence, improve their performance, and help them meet more goals.
Create realistic, virtual training scenarios
Experiential learning comes from participating in actual sales calls. No matter how many times your reps review written product information, memorize a sales presentation, or even go over a video of a successful sales call, they learn the most with real-life calls. AI sales training platforms can allow reps to upload a video to be assessed or provide prompts where the rep can record themselves and the system assesses their performance.
The platform automatically creates realistic sales training scenarios that will challenge your sales representatives across multiple scenarios, providing unbiased, data-backed feedback to quantify their strengths and weaknesses.
Capture soft skills and other communication variables with precision
Certain communication details can easily be missed if attention is diverted for any reason during an evaluation. AI algorithms can come to your rescue in this instance if they are included in your AI sales training tool.
SHRM reports that 89% of recruiters say when a hire doesn’t work out, it usually comes down to a lack of soft skills, and more employers are prioritizing soft skills as a result. It goes on to quote a vice president at CareerBuilder who said, “Companies have a lot to gain by treating soft skills as they would any technical skill.”
This platform allows you to simultaneously analyze not only what sales reps say but also how they say it, those soft skills that are so critical to developing positive relationships: The fluency, clarity, credibility, and empathy that they are generating are all variables that can be measured and converted into data. With technology, you can capture the use of words and body gestures with a level of precision that you can only achieve through an automated platform.
Open on-demand training and coaching opportunities
To feel confident in their ability to pitch, most sales reps need more than one practice session. Practicing multiple times is necessary for sales professionals to master the required skills, but sales managers cannot devote that much time to evaluation, training, and coaching tasks.
Using an AI sales training tool, sales reps can make record their pitch as many times as they want until the result reaches perfect scores. A sophisticated AI-powered coaching platform lets your reps review and rehearse material and practice as often as they want on their own schedule, with or without scenario prompts.
You can make informed, data-driven decisions and specific changes to improve performance across sales teams by closely analyzing communications data. Data-driven practice recommendations can be incorporated every day or every week for staff members to receive feedback. The tool can serve as a virtual mentor or coach by providing consistent feedback relevant to a person’s evolving skills.
Identifying skills gaps within your team can help learners fill those gaps by educating and supporting them. The organization will benefit from programs that facilitate empathetic, effective, and efficient communication at scale.
Related: How to Accelerate Sales: 5 Sales Coaching Tips
Design personalized training programs for employees, everywhere
It is not always possible to accommodate every employee’s needs because they have varying learning styles, different paces, and diverse levels of background knowledge. But now, you can create multiple training programs for separate people based on their unique roles and identified skills gaps.
You can also use your chosen AI sales training tool to connect with salespeople from anywhere. Since the pandemic, nobody wants to sit for hours or days in a classroom for a sales training program. Some of your most brilliant salespeople have probably worked from home for a while already, so they won’t give these comforts up for attending a class.
Achieving the same standard for every salesperson is possible through an AI solution that is capable of adapting automatically to diverse locations and style differences. Powered by AI, virtual training programs can take place anywhere.
Generate automated feedback assessments
You can’t manually review everyone’s sales pitch unless you have a small sales team. It is also challenging to ensure consistency if multiple sales managers listen to various employees to evaluate them. Even if the same manager does all the analysis, they typically can’t maintain consistency.
That isn’t a problem when it’s AI that’s performing, reviewing, and converting the training into data. An advanced AI sales training tool can base its assessments on an objective scoring system and apply it to everybody. If you use an AI system, you can provide salespeople with specific, recurring, and systematic feedback that helps everyone get to the same proficiency level, no matter their starting point.
Using powerful conversation intelligence technology, you can discover your most effective sales representatives or staff members. Afterward, you can share these strengths with low-performing team members to improve their performance.
Develop Your Teams with the Most Advanced AI Sales Training Solution
You can leverage a powerful AI sales training platform to train and coach your sales representatives effectively, accurately, and at scale. These are just a few examples of how your managers, trainers, and coaches can utilize this powerful platform. They can become more effective with the same technology as the business grows.
In conclusion, you can see there are many ways that your company can benefit creatively from using science-based and AI-powered coaching solutions. Only a robust, high-quality coaching platform can provide all of these capabilities and so much more. Hence, you should do extensive research to ensure that you will get as many, if not all, use cases possible.
Through Quantified’s AI technology, people from all organizational areas can make better human connections in order to achieve their goals. With our exclusive QC Score, you will be able to receive a single, clear and concise measure of communication effectiveness. Their skill level will improve by comparing it to peers, industry benchmarks, and aspirational metrics.
Quantified’s automated feedback, coaching, and performance measurement capabilities allow it to evaluate customer interactions and measure customer performance based on key behavioral dimensions. The platform can transform your team into high-performers, enabling them to deliver improved results. Request a demo now.