One of my biggest learnings when I first became a sales manager was assuming that salespeople knew what they were doing and importantly, that they were delivering relatively consistent messages. That was a big mistake, and one I learnt the hard way.
After a few months as Sales Manager, I joined one of our salespeople on a sales call. Early in the meeting, they started explaining what our company did. I was horrified. The explanation was unclear, confusing, and missing key points. I could tell I was making them nervous, which only made things worse.
After this meeting, I started going out on more and more sales calls, and the results were the same. The messages were inconsistent and, in some cases, just plain wrong. I must admit, I often found myself taking over meetings to rescue them. What I thought was saving the meeting probably wasn’t helping in the long run.
There are thousands of these meetings happening every day, and many of them are doing businesses harm. Research highlights that as many as 85% of sales meetings aren't hitting the mark with clients or prospects. Our salespeople are the face of the business, representing our brand and it’s critical they get it right.
Training and coaching absolutely help. But for salespeople to achieve mastery, or anywhere close to it, they need to practise. And practising on live prospects is risky.
That’s why tools that create safe, realistic practice environments, like AI-powered role play, are quickly becoming essential. They let salespeople refine their messaging, build confidence, and fail safely, so they’re ready to perform when it really counts. We see tools like these as not replacing traditional training and coaching but enhancing and embedding the learnings.
INDICATOR AI Sales Role Play Demo
Join us for a free 45-minute AI for Sales webinar this Thursday, 19 June at 11:00 AM, where Nick Allan (Head of AI) will demo the AI Sales Role Play tool in real time.
Register here to book your spot.
