Fireside Chat: AI Trains Knowledge. We Hone Instinct: The Human Edge in Sales Performance

Uh, explain the reality of AI sales roleplay versus human practice.

Yeah, great opening thought here, and I'm going to use Todd Duncan's words for transformation. I was just listening to that presentation, and really, this is about transformation. And where we are unique is that we are using AI to create an experience to bring two humans together where they practice, they rehearse, and they become better at their profession, their craft, and their skill. And sales is an experiential skill to develop. It takes a long time to be very good. And I like what Todd was saying. It starts with the belief system you have internally, and then now you need to go and practice that repetitiously, get the outcome or the result from the belief system that you have, and then take that into your muscle memory so that it becomes instinctual to the way you're operating. It becomes natural. You're not having to think about it so much. And a lot of sales training right now, which has become complex because there's so much, is very content-driven, very information-based. Um, is very intellectual. It puts a lot of mental practices on the salesperson that they have to be aware of when conducting. And I like what Todd said earlier, guiding a professional conversation or personal conversation. It's really that simple. So I'm taking a very fundamental concept in, in role play. I'm even enhancing it, or we're enhancing it and making even much more simpler to implement where we bring two people together in a structured conversation. We're posing challenges to the salesperson to use techniques or methods, and they're rehearsing and practicing together and feeling the conversation and feeling how to guide effectively based on the outcomes, based on how that conversation is flowing. So we are an AI sales roleplay agency. So kind of think of us as a creative firm or professional services firm. We design the roleplays for you by consulting with you at a very high level. We wanna understand what market you're playing in, where you're experiencing the most resistance in the sales process, how opportunities are moving from one stage of the pipeline to the other, where you wanna get a better conversion rate, where you wanna enter a new market, maybe introduce a new product, or maybe go back and negotiate new pricing with your customers. All require what would be a professional conversation that needs to be skilled, needs to be practiced, and therefore it is productive. So we are revolutionizing sales training from the thought of creating a real sales practice environment, simulating what your sales team is experiencing in those conversations to great effect. Uh, practice improves results immediately, and we developed the scenarios for you. They're customized to you. You, you have human-like buyers. We're casting real professional actors to play your customers, and they're bringing those conversations to life. With the emotional range that they offer. So that's what we do. We also offer an AI avatar component to that. That's part of the consulting that we'll do with you and still driven by the scenarios. It's very hard to, very hard to create scenarios that reflect specifically what you're experiencing in your market and your pipeline and your process. So yeah, that's a great question. It's a very fundamental concept, what we're doing here. It's even more simple to actually book meetings and work this in as part of your job function.

Do you have some slides to share?

Yeah. Is that not sharing? Okay, I get so excited. I get started.

Yeah, there we go.

I thought I was sharing the whole time. Yeah, I was so excited to talk to you. Yeah. Virtual Instinct. Instinct is an intelligence that comes from repetition. And we are an AI sales roleplay agency. That design these scenarios and exercises for you, cast the actors.

So, um, what is driving, in your opinion, that, that surge in adoption of AI-driven sales roleplays?

Yeah, large language models allow you to have a natural language conversation with, with the model, with the platform. The avatars are very expressive. They are lifelike. In fact, HeyGen's new model, the HeyGen, I think it's HeyGen version 5, is very expressive. They've got head tilts and all kinds of subtle eye expression now in the avatar. So with generative AI, you can have natural language conversations with platforms and you can have very human-like avatars to create customer personas in a simulated environment. And really every sales leader knows that practicing or Roleplay is effective. However, it just didn't scale very well in our organization. Practice improves results. So with the advent of large language models, with the avatars being really good, and with sales leaders being under an enormous amount of pressure and sales cycles getting longer, the stakes getting higher, and more complexity in the sales process itself and the methodology or the knowledge that you have to have, it's just solving a fundamental problem. It just makes so much sense to explore and invest in this area and begin deploying a solution that's going to benefit your company.

So, um, you're making a fundamental distinction between training and practice. So, uh, I believe you said sales training is the coursework and sales practice is the execution. So in your opinion, what's the fundamental difference, and why does that distinction matter right now?

Yeah, great question. Well, training is intellectual, it's knowledge, it's coursework, and we're, we're bringing that on. And that's part of the mental practices that we have to have and be aware of when we're, when we're conducting the sales process from the moment we walk in the door, from the moment we leave on December 31st, having hit our goal and hopefully earning our bonuses and, and, and being rewarded by that. So when you look at this illustration right here, you know, the modern salesperson has to have a lot of knowledge that needs to be aware and let's say present in the conversation when they're guiding it with a salesperson. So they get to keep track of their daily KPIs, certain number of phone calls, certain number of meetings, certain number of proposals. They have company-specific sales training, maybe a company-specific branded sales methodology, and there are many out there, uh, playbooks. Where are you in the sales process? What would you do next? What What case study would you send? What sales deck would you send? And then deep product knowledge. There's a lot of very technical use case for products out there that a salesperson has to have and be proficient in, in order to qualify and discover and do product demos. And then managing their time and preparing proposals and really moving that opportunity through the process with skill. There's so much going on from the thought of the salesperson having to retain knowledge and then begin using that knowledge. And training is very intellectual, puts too much on the person, and we really want that knowledge to be instinctual to the way they're operating the sales process. And more importantly, instinctual to the way they're guiding the conversation, being emotionally connected to it, feeling it, and using the right technique or the right method at the right time so that they can move that opportunity forward from the thought of being connected to it, not having to think about it too much. So training is intellectual, practice is behavioral. And sales being an experiential skill to acquire over time, we can do that in a simulated environment that mirrors real performance. And that's really where we need to go is take this training, take this knowledge, and put it in an environment where it's being used experientially and where now we're measuring and looking at a behavior and we can react to that behavior and improve from there. We can transform. Using Todd's words there, right?

So when it, when it comes to roleplay, um, what does AI roleplay actually do right? Um, so, um, the, the 26 or maybe 30 AI roleplay solutions, um, how does that create value for a sales team?

Well, AI roleplay is a remarkable technology. It really is. And it's good at training the literal. So when you want to scale conversations quickly, get repetition behind that, get it deployed to a large sales team, have consistency in the frameworks and the methods that you're using that are part of the scenarios and exercises that you can develop in the AI roleplay, it's very effective. So it's excellent at training the literal. And what we really need to do is now move that to being experiential, to where there's real human emotion in the session or in the practice that the salesperson can feel and now use that knowledge or use that information from the thought of their feeling their way through a conversation and using the right technique or the right method at the right time and whether it matters in the moment or not, moving that opportunity forward. So AI is very good at skill. It's very good at talk track reinforcement, specifically in a regulated environment, which you think is insurance, finance, and pharma. Or when there's a company-specific branded methodology, we're a Challenger shop or we're a band or medic or spend, we want to begin now incorporating those techniques as part of our qualifying and discovery work and actually be consistent in those techniques as part of our playbooks and frameworks. So it's really good at scale. And really good at implementing what would be structured conversations, uh, fast and repetitiously. Yeah.

So, um, the big question is now, it's scalable, it's really good, but what are the pitfalls? Where does AI roleplay fall short? Specifically, Michael, yeah, what is missing when there's no real human on the other side of the conversation?

The emotion, the tension. There's no consequence in an AI sales role play. It's pattern driven. It's good for retaining the knowledge of a structured conversation and memorizing it. However, it's not good for understanding the feeling that you're creating in the conversation. It's not good for understanding whether you're painting a picture in the person's mind who you're talking to. And you can see that in body language, Gerhard. We've talked about that a few times, is when a salesperson is explaining a technical feature, they really need to be so skilled as into drawing a picture in the person's mind, or in a multi-stakeholder meeting, the group's mind, of how that product or solution is going to solve their problem. So that's a real skill. And the only way you're going to know if you're painting a picture in the person's mind or in the multi-stakeholder meeting's mind is if you see it in the body language and listen Very carefully to the words they're using to describe it. Are using a lot of adjectives? Texture, color, shapes, and sizes? That would indicate that you've drawn that picture. Now, how do they feel about it? Well, the AI being literal, still being good at scale, is not going to give you the moment for which you feel something and whether the person you're talking to is feeling it as well. Good or bad, there's unpredictable moments in a live human-led conversation all the time. So it falls short in the area of not having real consequence. There's no pressure, no unpredictability, and there's no real emotional resistance. The AI avatars can have tone, can have expression relating to how they're programmed to be difficult or antagonistic. However, we all know that's not real emotion and we need to feel that. And the salesperson just practicing a little session is not going to have that experience. In AI roleplay. Yeah.

So now there's another element. You know, when I, when I think back what happened before AI roleplay, a lot of companies did peer-to-peer roleplay. And, and that approach did not always deliver the results that sales managers expected.

Yeah, peer-to-peer role play is a very vulnerable moment between two colleagues in a group session. It's not very realistic, and when two colleagues practice, the vulnerability doesn't allow you— first of all, a salesperson doesn't want a confident Alpha salesperson doesn't want to admit a vulnerability in a group session among their peers, among their colleagues, and that's really what you're doing in a role play. And they just haven't been realistic. It's also difficult to scale that to getting a group of people together in a room, getting everyone there. Maybe you have your most experienced salespeople helping create those scenarios, or they're the customers and the junior people are practicing. It's just still not very scalable and very— not very realistic. And the vulnerability between two colleagues and organizations just hasn't been that conducive to practicing in an environment like that. Now, a lot of companies do. They're consistent with it. However, in the virtual world with virtual meetings where we cast a professional actor, a stranger specifically designed to play your customer persona, it is very immersive. It is very real. And that's where we excel, creating a very immersive, very realistic environment where we're obsessed with it. It's a production that we're going to create for you that immerses the salesperson in the environment. Where they're using a specific skill.

I find it fascinating what, what, uh, made you decide to, um, give salespeople the opportunity to practice authentic behaviors with real actors. I think that is, to, to me, probably the most surprising discovery in the market, and, uh, What made you think of that and how does it really work?

Well, in my 33 years of sales, I— and Todd mentioned this, and I think a lot of the speakers remind me of Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy, and there's another one, Peter Lowe or Earl Nightingale, the fathers of self-improvement and sales. And I remember riding around listening to those speakers on cassette tapes in my car learning sales techniques. And so very early on, I was using sales techniques kind of out of context where they were effective in conversations. I was just inexperienced. So throughout my career, as I became more successful and continued to pursue developing the skill and actually got into leadership roles, I was like thinking, well, how can I bring, or how can I create an environment for the salespeople that I'm leading where we can use these techniques to improve how we're selling. And I did that with different companies to great success. And then 13 years ago, as a personal interest of mine, I began taking on-camera acting classes and improv and performing arts. And it's something I really, really enjoyed. And what you learn in those classes is how to break down scripts, how to break down scenes. What is the moment before and what is the moment after? What is the story that you're telling and what brought that character to the emotion that they're trying to portray? With the other characters in the scene. What is the goal? What is the obstacle? Where is the tension, or how is it being created, or the tactic for which you are going to achieve that goal? So performing arts or acting and whatever you can do to become a better communicator, from the thought of being connected to it emotionally and grounded with it and being a better active listener, all applies to sales. And a professional actor in the world today is auditioning virtually, they're submitting digitally, And they're professional rehearsers in a very similar world as the professional salesperson where they face rejection all the time. And they're skilled communicators and they're working on their craft. So to bring these two professionals together is very dynamic. In fact, the engagements that we've conducted, the salesperson always enjoys it. They're very curious about the professional actor and they always end up having a rapport, which is the first instinct that we have is a human connection with somebody else. So it's very dynamic. I'm so passionate about bringing that to salespeople to help them grow. Just like Todd mentioned, it's all about helping people grow, and this environment is the way to do it.

So describe for me, what is the experience like when, uh, salespeople practice with real actors, and how is that different from an AI simulation or a traditional training?

It's the same tension that you experience when you join a virtual meeting with a prospective customer for the first time, or even for the third meeting when you're in discovery. It's— there's tension immediately, right? So salespeople, because the environment is so immersive and so detail-specific to what they're experiencing in their conversations with clients, we develop scenarios based on the pipeline. Where they're experiencing lower than average conversion rates or where they're entering new markets. And we will develop the scenarios that target specific skills in those areas. And when a salesperson joins a meeting with an actor-led role play, they're entering that meeting with the same nervousness, the same vulnerability, the same level of tension as they would a conversation with a real client. It's that immersive. So they're gonna feel that they're, they're gonna walk into that and they're gonna have to ground themselves with, okay, I'm now settling into This is a professional conversation, and I know that I need to call up my sales intellect and that knowledge I have to be able to guide this conversation as professionally as I can. So it's real tension, it's real emotions, and it's the real environment for which they are practicing in that makes the skill so quickly acquired.

So what you're saying is there's a difference in The quality of the simulation where the AI simulation is a data-driven and emotionally impoverishing experience, whereas the actor role-play dynamics lead to an experience where data becomes really secondary, but conversational fluency becomes more apparent because when you're in a high tension situation, you need to dig into your instincts and elevate those instincts to a level where it becomes second nature.

Absolutely. That's a great statement. AI is going to be a literal experience. Good for memorization, good for learning structure. A human-led actor session is going to be emotional. The two complement each other. However, we're now taking the knowledge from training and from coursework that is that company's specific methodology and approach to sales And now we're bringing it to life and we're bringing it to life with real emotion and real tension and real dynamics. And the customer persona or the actor is given director's notes for which to bring that to life, to install an awkward pause, to give an objection with real emotion, to indicate progress very subtly in body language that the salesperson needs to pick up on, which is the signaling that they need to become acute to, which tells them they are guiding that conversation professionally and towards an outcome that's productive for the company or for the session itself. So now, Gerhard, with every session and it being recorded, we get a transcript. So every human-led practice now becomes data as well, and we can analyze that. So our engagements can have anywhere from 60 sessions to 100 sessions in, and then with each session having 5 or 6 different attempts at a skill, We're going to get that transcript. We're going to now be able to analyze 60 transcripts or 100 transcripts and really provide some good insights as to where the instinct is for that sales team or that salesperson and what skills need to be worked on and improved on from there. If you start with AI, you're starting with a data-driven approach. If you start with a human-led approach, you're going to get transcripts. You're going to be able to analyze those transcripts, see where the skills and instincts are, and then you can apply that back to the AI. -enabled practice platform. They really do complement each other, um, one being emotional, the other being literal. And in the sales world, we need both.

Michael, it's Jim Cathcart.

Hey, Jim, how are you doing? Yeah, good to see you again.

Yeah, you too. Uh, this really grabs me. I, I would say it blows me away, but that's not adequate. It What I get is that with the combination of setting aside temporarily the emotional factor and allowing someone to be themselves in the moment without worrying about how Freddie's going to think about me after we're through with the role play, or how I'm going to look, you know, to so-and-so, that, that is so very powerful. I do a lot of speech coaching for executives, and invariably when we're taking apart a story, if we've got a script like you provide to people, we can change one word like anxious to eager, and the meaning of the whole sentence changes. And so I can see, I mean, what you've created is something super powerful. Good.

Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that with me. And like, If we are operating a conversation or conducting a conversation purely from the intellect, we're not feeling it. And what we're doing is in an indirect way suppressing our charisma because we're thinking too much. And one of the things Todd mentioned earlier is in our belief system and in our belief system being so foundational or transformational to the way we are being a sales professional, we want to have a natural charisma. We want to have a natural energy, and that means we're free. We're not thinking about the conversation. We're just guiding it from feel. And next thing you know, that customer's going, hey, I don't feel pressured. They're listening. I feel like they truly understand the problem that we're trying to solve and the pain that we're in, and this company or this person is the best person to help us solve it. Right? And we do that from feel. And if we're thinking too much about it, our charisma is going to be dampened. That natural energy we have for helping people is going to be slightly, a little dim. We need to bring that back to a bright light. And the only way we're going to do that is by really connecting to it and operating it with feel.

Cool.

Let me, let me— that's a keeper.

Suppressing our charisma.

Yeah.

Let, let me wrap this up by—

yeah, you got it—

on, on your words, um, enlightening. It is really a question of illumination, meaning that traditional roleplay or AI-led roleplay is like a lightning bug. An actor-led roleplay is like a bolt of lightning that transforms performance, behavior, and results.

Yes, it is an exhilarating feeling for a professional salesperson to practice with a professional actor. You can see the growth from the beginning of our engagements where they just start to book their sessions and have a few experiences with an actor, uh, and from the end where they now are at maybe having 15 total conversations. Uh, you can see that charisma, you can see that light, you can see that growth in them, and they are You know, they are experiencing exhilaration and they are motivated, inspired to turn around and go make phone calls or go after their most difficult, toughest client that's blown them off for the longest time and take another approach with that charisma and energy and confidence. We want to build confidence. We want to really build someone up so much from practice, realistic practice, that their confidence becomes that charisma and it's present in the way they are. operating conversations or conducting them professionally. Um, and you guys have that naturally too. So did Todd. I really enjoyed his, uh, his comments. So yeah.

Thank you.

A salesperson cannot overlook, uh, the charisma and natural energy that brought them into the profession and, and, and, uh, and develop and work on that. You can work on your charisma. It's just all about being free. Hey, well, here's how you reach me. We'll bring it to a close. Thank you, gentlemen, for your time. I really enjoyed it. And, uh, there's the QR code. Reach us here.

Go and visit virtualinstinct.ai or get in touch with Michael. You even have your phone number. People reach you many different ways. Um, so if you want to improve performance, uh, in, in a way that it is enlightening and energizing Go to Michael. He's gonna help you win.

Mm-hmm. Thank you so much.