AI Sales Coaching Software for Developing a High-Performing Team
As organizations shift to create more dynamic structures and resources for their business’s revenue teams, more emphasis on effective sales enablement is reaching every corner of the sales process. Nowhere is this more crucial than sales training. New BDRs and salespeople need engaging, supportive training to learn the ropes; experienced salespeople want to sharpen their skills to grow their commissions.
But, according to recent research, “26% of reps say their sales training is ineffective.” Even worse, according to G2, 84% of the sales training that occurs is forgotten within three months, anyway.
If your sales team is disengaged from your training processes from the outset and forgets most of the information by the next quarter, it’s hard to pull together a high-performing sales team.
It can feel like the answer is focusing on experienced salespeople who might need less training to get results. But these salespeople may be outside of your hiring budget, may be unwilling to learn new skills through disengaging processes, and even might leave soon; salesperson turnover has increased dramatically in the last few years.
The answer is better training processes and resources from the start in the form of AI sales coaching software. In this guide, we’ll examine:
- What AI sales coaching software is
- Who benefits by updating your processes to modern sales coaching software
- A four-step plan for using the software to grow your high-performing sales team
What Is AI Sales Coaching Software?
Sales training resources come in numerous different forms. Static notes about best practices, updated slide decks about products and revenue goals, and in-person seminars were the traditional tools companies relied on for decades.
As software evolved, it began to offer more comprehensive training: more detailed scenarios, searchable best practices and standard operating procedures, and centralized sources of updated information.
The more modern tools of the past few years have become even more intuitive and interactive, giving sales reps much more in-depth knowledge resources, customer histories, and tactical support than ever before.
But AI sales coaching software carries a host of features and capabilities unmatched by previous generations of software. Today’s AI sales coaching tools come with many of these features:
- Integrations with CRM, sales, and video chat platforms for complete immersion in customer trends and information
- AI-powered simulations that mirror common scenarios sales reps must handle from the lead qualifying process through to contract execution
- Personalized learning tracks for each salesperson based on their individual strengths and weaknesses, career trajectory, needs, and learning preferences
- Courses and simulations available 24/7 for remote and hybrid workforces
- Analytics dashboards for both individual employees and leadership roles to understand progress, potential, and areas for growth
- In-the-moment feedback from the objective AI coach for faster, more effective coaching and learning
Most AI sales coaching solutions offer many or all of these features, which can be further tailored to your organization’s unique needs. So it’s important to find the right coaching software that can grow your team’s skills based on your industry, growth goals, and business needs.
Who Benefits From AI Sales Coaching Software?
On the surface, it may seem like the value of AI sales coaching software is limited to the members of your sales teams who have licenses for it. Aside from improving the capabilities of those employees and thereby increasing revenue, is there really any impact for the rest of your organization?
Ultimately, virtually everyone in a company benefits from sales coaching software that substantively improves learning and sales outcomes. Consider the following:
Novice and Entry-Level Salespeople
New hires that don’t have much experience in the sales world benefit from engaging, supportive training. Your new hires, from BDRs to inside sales reps, need personalized coaching that helps them build the tools they need to develop a unique sales style that complements your brand and departmental goals.
Learning the trade and handling awkward interactions, flat refusals, angry leads, and savvy negotiations (as well as everything in between) is hard work that many people feel uncomfortable with. Providing that training with an AI coach instead of training sessions with a manager or in front of a group improves the experience and the learning outcomes.
Newer members of your sales team can feel more comfortable, grow more confident, and practice winning behaviors without worrying about embarrassment.
Experienced Salespeople Who Want to Grow New Skills
There’s always more to learn in the world of sales, and experienced sellers know this. Whether they want to hone their craft and become the top salesperson in your organization or your leadership team wants to keep everyone up-to-date on new products and processes, ongoing training is a must.
According to Avast,
“Investing in sales training helps you stay competitive, empowers your team, provides better support to customers, and wins business — it can produce strong salespeople that will continue to deliver ongoing value for your business and grow your client base.”
In the context of protecting and growing your business, ongoing sales training is essential to any long-term business plan.
But sales training for your most experienced reps goes deeper. With employee turnover and lack of buy-in higher than in other recent years, it’s just as crucial for businesses to give high-performers a reason to stay put. One-on-one coaching with a state-of-the-art AI sales coach is engaging, valuable, and shows you’re invested in your team’s development.
Sales Training Managers
Manual sales training used to be a painful necessity, whether the organization had a dedicated training manager or a sales manager who had training as one of their numerous duties. It takes a lot of time to train new hires, provide assessments and coaching for longer-term employees, and give seminars or lessons about new practices.
These sessions are inefficient; they take time away from forecasting and managing, and no sales manager can give everyone the flexible, universally available support they need to thrive.
But with AI-powered coaching software, sales managers can balance all of their duties without sacrificing training. They can check in on each employee’s progress, use the objective data to build employee performance reports, and reach out to sales reps as needed for encouragement, performance improvement plans, and kudos. You get better results and better insight for a sliver of the time spend.
Sales Directors and VPs
Higher-level management positions also see immediate benefits from AI sales coaching. Those benefits include:
- Projecting departmental growth over time
- Knowing the capabilities of individual sales reps and regional sales teams
- Having objective insight into the growth and capabilities of their teams, as well as ensuring that new product and process knowledge is being learned
HR Teams and Recruiters, Too!
Any time onboarding and new hire training are improved, it can remove a lot of stress from your HR department. AI sales coaching software helps get new hires “up to speed” in a documented, standardized process. Because engaging experienced sales reps can also reduce turnover, you can reduce the workload on internal recruiters, onboarding teams, and HR staff.
Related: How to Choose the Best Sales Acceleration Software for Your Team
How to Use AI Sales Coaching Software in Today’s Work Environment
The benefits of having the right sales coaching platform are virtually endless. But you can optimize implementation and department-wide use to ensure you have a high-performing sales team. Follow these steps to grow your team:
1. Get Everyone Up to Speed
First and foremost, you can use AI sales coaching to ensure everyone is at the level they should be. Build out milestones and goals for new hires so they can learn and pass assessments. You can also create a curriculum and milestones for your current employees, so you know everyone has a thorough mastery of the basics.
Whether your company is new and small, or whether it’s enterprise-level with sales reps who have been selling for decades, everyone needs to be on the same page with modern sales tactics and techniques that fit your brand.
With just this base-level implementation, you can have immediate quality control for your sales processes and give everyone the right expectations for the levels of sales acumen they need to have.
2. Create Advanced Learning Opportunities for Everyone
Next, your organization can let your salespeople use the sales coaching software at will to learn advanced skills, practice complex sales scenarios, and otherwise widen their expertise.
The right sales coaching software will curate personalized learning paths based on each employee’s unique profile and performance so they can excel as effectively and efficiently as possible.
In addition, AI sales coaching can happen 24/7, giving your employees complete flexibility over the learning schedule and speed of progress. Your training manager’s availability will never be a bottleneck.
Related: How to Approach Evaluating Sales Training Programs
3. Use Feedback and Metrics to Power Employee Performance Reviews, Promotions, and Team Structuring
By allowing employees to upskill with premium resources, you’re investing in their career and growth, furthering their buy-in and interest in your company. The organization also directly benefits from the increased revenue that higher-performing reps can bring in.
Even better, you and your leadership team can see who is a high-performer and who’s striving to grow, which is valuable for determining internal promotions and ensuring everyone has the position they want in your department.
Through the platform, you can gauge:
- Who is keeping up with minimum requirements
- Who is proactively learning new skills
- Individual rates of growth and development
Whether these factors weigh into bonuses and performance reviews or simply underscore who should be promoted to new opportunities, having an objective, rigorously designed source of data levels the playing field and gives you more insight.
4. Regularly Update the Software With New Releases, New Processes, and Internal Demos
Keep your software updated with information about new products and product lines, new trends in your markets, and more. While AI training software can learn and grow over time, you can quickly change course to reach new markets by integrating the software with other information sources in your business.
For example, suppose your CSM and customer support teams see a newly developing trend in demand or frustration. In that case, sales reps can learn new responses in simulations derived from those customer calls so they meet the market as it changes.
Start Building Your High-Performing Sales Team Today With AI Sales Coaching Software
AI sales coaching software does more than provide sales enablement and grow your company’s revenue. It can increase employee buy-in while decreasing turnover, give you a high-performing team that has insight into modern markets and sales practices, and benefit every department that even tangentially touches sales.
At Quantified, our AI sales coaching software is designed to help sales teams grow into strong, versatile revenue engines, with one-on-one coaching, helpful feedback, and flexible training that fits everyone’s needs. Contact us today to learn more or to schedule a demo.