How AI Sales Coaching Platforms Help Sales Teams in a Dynamic Market
An AI sales coaching platform is an important tool. Many sales organizations already understand that better, more accessible, and more tailored training offers benefits. But it’s not enough to just know that new learning and development initiatives grant some degree of advantage. True understanding comes from specifically how it can help your team.
Here’s a surprising snapshot of why improved training matters in a dynamic market—that is to say, a dynamic employment market: 70% of employees would consider leaving their current job to work somewhere with better training and career development.
Additionally, recent findings by an Axonify survey revealed that a 92% majority of employees believe workplace training positively impacts their job engagement. Furthermore, 59% of employees think training improves their overall job performance.
Whenever sales organizations make changes to their processes, the first consideration is often the effects on customers and sales revenue. However, realizing the supplemental benefits of better training underscores the value of responding to every angle of dynamic markets, internal and external. Consider increased employee confidence, better retention, and the ability to attract top talent from other organizations that aren’t offering the same caliber as your AI sales coaching platform.
Of course, better training also increases revenue, improves client relationships, and strengthens your organization. So, as you develop a plan to implement more AI-powered training, consider all the challenges of a dynamic market and how your L&D tech stack can help your team through each one.
Overcoming Challenges in Today’s Market With an AI Sales Coaching Platform
A dynamic market can be caused by any number of rapidly changing factors, and today’s market has undergone quite a few transformations. On the employment side, industries are seeing a conflict between working from home and returning to the office, salary and wage gap concerns, layoffs in the tech industry, and ongoing questions about whether AI will take more jobs than it creates.
On the sales side of the market, organizations are responding to years of turbulent price fluctuations, new developments in health and pharmaceutical products, and broad changes in how consumers shop and what they care about. Here’s how these changes commonly present as challenges for sales teams:
- There’s a lot of turnover as employees seek out better benefits or more enriching opportunities with other employers.
- Sales reps have outdated skills and tactics that may no longer apply in modern markets, and most training courses continually lag behind.
- Consumers have greater access to dozens of competing providers in any given market.
- Because there’s so much competition, building rapport in a sea of noise is more important (and more challenging).
- It’s more important than ever to focus your team’s attention on warm, well-qualified leads rather than every lead you can generate.
- Other companies in your industry are harnessing machine learning and AI to process large amounts of market data and gain a competitive advantage.
Related: How AI-Powered Sales Coaches Can Transform Training Programs
These challenges are not insurmountable. By recognizing them and making sure your salespeople have the tools and skills to perform (and the incentives to stay), your company can thrive in this dynamic market.
6 Ways an AI Sales Coaching Platform Addresses Market Challenges
It may not be immediately clear that more robust training is the answer to dynamic market challenges, and it’s certainly not an exhaustive strategy. But if you dig into each challenge, you’ll see a direct line between the obstacle and how better sales coaching can lead to a solution. An AI sales coaching platform, in particular, can help.
AI platforms can generate realistic training scenarios, assess salespeople, provide personalized feedback, and offer 24/7 availability to actively practice. The AI coach doesn’t have the time constraints, limited attention, and inherent biases that even the most professional and committed coaches have.
Consider these specific ways training through an AI sales coaching platform can strengthen your organization in dynamic markets.
1. Provide Personalized Learning Tracks to Keep Employees Engaged and Growing
Customized learning that suits the individual needs and current capabilities of each salesperson gets better results. Large in-person sessions are naturally going to be too general, as speakers and trainers have to either focus on basics or leave out a lot of the audience. This can lead to boredom, frustration, and disengagement.
But an AI sales coaching platform can:
- Use practical role-play scenarios to form a baseline assessment of each sales rep.
- Create individualized learning tracks based on each employee’s weaknesses.
- Provide microlessons whenever the sales rep is available.
- Test out newly learned skills or concepts through practical, virtual exercises so users can refine their approach and drill on messaging until they’re satisfied.
Highly motivated salespeople can progress at a fast pace, and managers can be automatically alerted about their drive and growth.
2. Retain More Salespeople by Emphasizing Development
By providing an engaging and measurably useful learning tool, you can retain employees who are motivated to grow their careers and become stronger sellers. Just as employees will leave in search of development, employees will stay if their current role fulfills that desire. In fact, approximately 76% of employees will stay with an employer that gives them ongoing training.
By having an AI sales coaching platform available for your teams, you can retain employees and be a more appealing employer to prospective candidates.
3. Have Documentation of Certifications, Skills, and Capabilities
In niche industries like pharmaceuticals, insurance, finance, and professional services, organizations need to adhere to certification and regulatory standards. This can include providing legally required disclaimers, ensuring salespeople are suitably trained in different product areas, and confirming that employees are diligently following HIPAA and PII requirements at all stages of customer interactions.
With a more robust digital coaching and training platform, your teams can maintain very clear records of which salespeople hold different certifications and/or have completed the required training. This is incredibly useful in preparing for audits, maintaining best practices, and training specialized sales reps for particular roles.
You can also go beyond the basic necessities. Give employees badges for different types of coursework and passed tests so they can be automatically assigned prospects and leads that require those higher level skills. This incentivizes trainees to go above and beyond, and it provides real value for them if they want to grow their careers with your company.
4. Prioritize Human Connection Over Content
One of the most challenging changes in today’s dynamic market is how consumers value human connection. More shoppers are researching products and solutions on their own before reaching out—but when they do reach out, they want immediate human attention. Rapport and connection are some of the best ways to stand out in a crowded market, and the messaging has to be tailored specifically to a lead’s preferences and interests, with little room for error. Sales reps need practice to master this level of empathy and personalized approach, and AI coaches have the availability to provide those opportunities.
5. Add More Data to Your Sales-Enablement Tech Stack
Dynamic means constantly changing. What worked in the past may work better now or it may not work at all. The more AI-powered software you have in your sales-enablement tech stack, the faster you can pick up on shifting trends and respond to them.
For example, if a portion of your target clientele isn’t responding as positively as they once did to your messaging, you can dig into your CRM and account management software to find out why. Then, you can update your AI sales coaching platform with new strategies and immediately start training your sales team.
Related: Can AI Coaching Platforms Actually Boost Sales Performance? Here’s What the Data Says
You can also take all the data your AI has about sales reps’ learning and progress to see where it correlates with increases in revenue, closed-won rates, and customer retention. Either celebrate the progress or zero in on the training courses that have made the biggest impact.
6. Give Sales Reps More Comfortable, Convenient Learning Opportunities
One unique advantage of an AI sales coach is that it can listen to agents sell to an avatar within sales role-play exercises. It can give tailored advice in the moment and feedback after the fact. Your reps can immediately jump back into a similar exercise for more practice or move on to something else.
This method eliminates a lot of what salespeople find uncomfortable about role-play tactics: performing in front of an audience that’s judging them. When it’s an AI coach, there’s less resistance and more focus on the skill instead of stage fright. This singular advantage ties into increasing sales rep retention and training reps to provide the human connection consumers expect.
Prepare for Dynamic Markets With an AI Sales Coaching Platform
The market is always shifting, but the importance of good training is as strong as ever. With Quantified’s comprehensive AI sales training platform, you can give your sales team access to individualized learning opportunities and practical, low-stakes role-play exercises that measurably improve their skills. Reach out today to take a tour of our platform and see where it fits into your training tech stack.