Your sales team probably isn’t getting enough practice selling before business-critical deals are at stake.
This is a big missed opportunity.
Sales teams drive revenue. The faster new sellers ramp and start generating pipeline, the faster the business sees results. Coaching is one way to get that boost. In a Korn Ferry study, 94% of top sales organizations said coaching improved seller performance.
Normally, in order for sales members to practice pitching conversations and improve performance, they need time from leaders who can role play and provide them with feedback. But those leaders are busy and often manage large teams, which makes time-to-readiness longer for new sellers.
How TEKsystems Used AI Sales Coaching and Role Play to Grow Readiness
TEKsystems, a global technology and business services company that operates as part of Allegis Group, found a clear opportunity to improve sales readiness and performance through Dynamic AI learning experiences with Degreed Maestro.
Chris Harry, Chief Talent and Learning Officer at TEKsystems, explained that the first three phases of their sales funnel (prospecting, generating interest, and qualifying) were a huge indicator of holistic deal success.
“What we know as a company is, if we can move that business deal velocity at a particular rate and get to qualifying, we are 60% more likely to win the business and fill the business as required,” Harry said.
The TEKsystems team understood that improving performance in these areas of the funnel had the potential for massive return on investment (ROI). They began by onboarding a small cohort of new sellers with Maestro AI role playing experiences in an effort to improve sales learning and time to ramp.
To accomplish this, they created Maestro experiences focused on four key skill areas:
- Elevator pitch: Introducing the company and its services
- Handling objections: Responding to common pushback
- Discovery questions: Asking the right questions to understand customer needs
- Full prospect call: Practicing the full conversation with all the necessary pieces
Adding AI Coaching to Human Mentorship
These experiences were never meant to replace human coaching. When new sellers could practice and learn from an expert, prior practice with Maestro complemented and made the time spent with sales leaders more effective.
It’s the balance of more immediate, feedback-provided role plays and the human-to-human mentorship that will go on to make role-based learning faster and more effective overall.
Each AI learning experience built on the previous one. On average, learners spent about 15 minutes each on Maestro experience, which cumulatively accounted for about an hour of training per learner across the four focus areas. And even that short time investment produced measurable improvements in confidence and readiness.
Seeing the Why and ROI of AI Learning Experiences
The early pilot revealed something important: Small, targeted practice opportunities can have a measurable impact on sales readiness.
Within their pilot group, 25% of the cohort landed a services meeting after being at TEKsystems for less than six months. Previously, developing a services deal took new sellers 36 to 40 months. In other words, one quarter of new sellers achieved a milestone that previously took years. According to Harry, that’s a strong, data-backed signal that the group’s extra coaching preparation accelerated the path to revenue.
“Our ROI on just this group could be a force factor within 12 months from launching this,” Harry said.
Why did dynamic AI learning make such a big difference?
A big benefit of the AI approach for the learners was psychological safety. Many new sellers hesitate to practice repeatedly in front of their managers or peers. AI learning created a safe space where they could experiment and refine their approach without judgment, before they were ready for a more critical audience.
“Overall, we found astonishing feedback,” Stefanie Kuehn, Senior Program Manager, Organizational Development at TEKsystems, said. “Their confidence grew. They were able to role play in a safe environment, and that meant not having a leader or a mentor over your shoulder listening in. But they were able to do the Maestro experiences multiple times over until they felt that they were good enough to then go ahead and approach that call or test out their ability.”
Expanding AI Role Playing Across the Business
As an industry, we’re seeing a shift. Learning and development teams are becoming more embedded and better integrated across functions, rather than operating as a separate team. TEKsystems’ plan to expand Maestro AI role playing across more use cases in the organization is a case in point of this new cross-functional approach to L&D.
“Maestro really speaks for itself,” Kuehn said. “It’s an excellent tool to use. It really has a lot of great potential to get integrated into more than just where our sales development reps are.”
Kuehn specified that they are now looking to expand Maestro use into the talent delivery side of the business. The team plans to hire 500 new recruiters, embed Maestro into their onboarding, and build their confidence before they start hands-on coaching experiences with their leaders.
From there, the team plans to expand Maestro learning experiences beyond onboarding into day-to-day, continuous learning, or “hyperskilling,” as the company calls it, meaning accelerated skill building at every level.
After all, all employees could improve performance with more opportunities for practice. AI-powered learning experiences make that practice scalable. For organizations like TEKsystems, the result has been faster time to readiness and stronger performance for sellers. But that’s only the beginning.
Restons en contact
Je souhaite m’inscrire à la newsletter mensuelle pour me tenir informé(e) des prochains événements, bénéficier d’éclairages exclusifs et recevoir l’actualité des solutions Degreed.