In this Selling Power TV interview, host Gerhard Schwander talks with Suresh Madhuvarsu, founder and CEO of SalesTable.ai, about the core problem facing sales managers: the tension between strategic planning and the tactical demands of daily deal coaching, onboarding, and compliance. Madhuvarsu explains that SalesTable.ai’s AI Sales Manager Copilot addresses this imbalance by automating coaching and role‑plays, providing a deal‑specific chatbot, and delivering real‑time insights into deal progress and rep readiness. The Copilot surfaces reasons why deals stall, offers targeted coaching recommendations, and measures sales‑readiness, especially in regulated sectors like pharma, healthcare, insurance, and retail. By handling quizzes, assessments, and compliance guidance, the system reduces the average 10‑hour‑per‑rep weekly burden on managers, freeing them to focus on strategy while ensuring reps have timely, contextual support. A before‑and‑after example from a pharma organization illustrates how the Copilot improves credibility with customers and trust between reps and managers.
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Hi, my name is Gerhard Schwander and welcome to Selling Power TV. Today we have the great pleasure of meeting with Suresh Madhuvarsu, who is the founder and CEO of SalesTable.ai. Hi, Suresh.
Gerhard, I'm really excited to talk to you today.
What is the number one challenge that a sales manager is facing?
When we think about any job description of a sales manager, It consists of 2 specific things. One is the strategy development, and then on the tactical level, they're also supposed to do the deal coaching, the review of the deals on a daily basis, make sure that you are actively monitoring your reps on how well they are doing. Then of course, you know, in addition to that, the whole of the onboarding and training, that's exactly where the whole of the sales managers are breaking at this point of time. Because if somebody says, I'm doing the strategy really well, Unfortunately, they're missing out on the tactical level of the coaching and onboarding and making sure that the culture is doing good. On the other extreme end, if somebody is actually doing the tactical angle really well, they are not able to contribute on the strategic angle.
How does Sales Table give the sales manager the freedom so that they can think strategically and act in a purposeful way or interact with salespeople so they guide their actions so the company is more successful?
What we did was to really create what we call as the AI sales manager Copilot. The whole idea being over there, how do we help sales managers manage not just the sales reps, but the deal support, the daily aspects of asking the questions about the product pricing and the messaging, and then what are the next steps in a particular deal to be done? That's That's what the power that we have given to sales managers in addition to everything that we have at Sales Table for sales reps.
What does the Copilot do for the salesperson?
We actually equip every sales rep with automated coaching and role plays as well as in a simple way, a chatbot that actually kind of interacts with you and trying to understand the specific challenges that you are going through in a specific deal. And it actually gives you highly contextualized, industry-specific, the deal-specific answers for you so that you become more confident before you go in front of the customers, write that next email with the next steps. And that's really all packaged in one single context for us, which is Sales Table.
How do managers use the Copilot to measure the performance of salespeople?
First and foremost thing that everybody is looking through is How are the deals going? Copilot basically comes back with saying, hey, you know what, there are these 5 deals that are run by Suresh and then we haven't really moved to the next step because of these specific reasons. The idea of providing the specific reasons is we want to be able to look at these reasons and then provide the specific coaching. For example, on the first call, Suresh didn't really get all the information needed in the discovery. Let Suresh go back to the coaching of the first call on how to do the discovery based on the specific sales process that we are following through. And now the other question that we are trying to answer is what is the readiness of these sales reps that you have? Because at any point of time when we are looking into some of the industries like the pharma, healthcare, insurance, and retail, there is a constant flow of the sales reps that are coming and going, and it is Unfortunately, impossible for a sales manager to be on top of every single deal that is out there. The idea for us is to really measure the sales readiness of the reps and then make sure that the sales managers know about it and really focus on strategy Monday morning to Friday evening.
Can you give me a before and after story of sales organization that has implemented your solution?
A lot of pharma companies actually have science and science background people that are coming into the sales. It is so important for the managers to really think through on what is the best way to provide the coaching and daily support on the deals for them. And what the AI sales manager does in this case is to really provide the entire quizzes and assessments of what they are supposed to sell. And put everything in a box in terms of the regulatory, the compliance needs, so that when different sales reps are coming through the organization, don't know exactly what to say, how to say, and are very specific within the compliance and the needs of the products and how they can integrate.
Sales Table AI is helping salespeople establish a higher level of credibility and trust with the customer. But at the same time, Sales Table AI is going to improve the trust level between the salesperson and the manager?
Sales managers spend almost about 10 hours per rep per week. Humanly, it is impossible to support 8 sales reps on a weekly basis for a manager. And that's really where we want to change that narrative, where we want to make sure that managers get back their time while sales reps are actually performing to the best of the level. And getting the help on the deals and that they are executing on a daily basis when they need it, where they need it.
Suresh, how can people learn more?
I'm available all the time on my email. suresh@salestable.ai is one. LinkedIn is another great option to reach out to me as well. And I'm always looking forward to learn from sales leaders and really provide that value and what we are seeing in the market.
