Imagine your reps can practice 100 hours of role-plays per day. Your watch says it's impossible, right?
You spend 10 minutes for one role-play session and then 5 minutes on review and feedback.
Another 15 minutes minutes to re-do the session. And we have half an hour for one rep.
A team of 10 equals 5 hours of your time. A group of 20 will take more than the average working day.
At this point, you must be tired of the number you read here. Won't you be tired of repeatedly doing the same material with the team?
So, yeah, your watch is correct. You don't have enough time for it.
But what if you get AI to represent your buyer first and then turn to a coach to give instant feedback on areas to improve?
With advanced technologies today, sales leaders can enable AI coaching in minutes to streamline onboarding and quickly scale upskilling.
This guide will focus on AI role-plays as an efficient way to increase sales skills. You will learn the best practices to create them (including examples) and the right platforms to launch them. Let's start!
What is AI role-play?
AI role-play is the simulation of your real-life sales conversations: cold calls, discovery, giving the demo, sales pitches, handling objections, inviting to the webinar, you name it.
Your reps receive real-time feedback and can do this role-play multiple times. Sales coaches consider AI role-plays as the perfect way for on-demand learning.
What are the benefits of AI role-plays for sales training?
Both sales managers and reps are gaining with the simulation. Take a look at the numbers.
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- With AI role-plays, Reply.io achieved a 30% decrease in ramp time for newcomers while doubling their booking rates in the first few months.
- Half of high-performing sales teams are leveraging AI technology now (as discovered by HubSpot).
- Setting up AI role-plays as part of sales training allowed teams to increase their win rate by 11-28% on average while taking only hours for the setup (according to the data from PitchMonster).
- For new hires and experienced reps, it's the best way to prepare themself for actual calls, learn new skills, reduce stress, and improve confidence (Close says about mock calls).
How to create an AI role-play for the sales team?
Creating AI role-play doesn't mean you have to gather petabytes of calls data or use machine learning.
The process is far more straightforward.
You will need to start with prompts you can upload to AI tools (you will get their overview later in the guide) to play buyer persona and tackle your specific sales case.
Let us show you how to create them one by one.
Step 1: Prepare AI buyer persona
Match the AI buyer persona with your real ICP (ideal customer profile) to get the maximum out of training.
It will allow sales reps to implement skills acquired in practice into conversations with prospects.
The prompt should contain a name, job title, persona background, and personality traits. Grab these examples:
Example for B2B fellas
Name: David
Job title: VP of Marketing
Background: David is a marketing expert with ten years of experience and two years at his current position, building the content marketing dep from zero.
Personality traits: harsh in replies, loves numbers and facts, uses light-hearted humor, and is generally skeptical about offers from cold calls.
Example, for those who sell offline goods
Name: Thomas
Job title: Plant worker
Background: Thomas just finished his shift on the plant. He has a house mortgage and a car debt. Thomas is a family guy and has two kids.
Personality traits: he has a good heart and genuinely cares for his family; Thomas might use absurd humor sometimes.
💡 Pro tip:
Align persona traits to rep skills and sales readiness. For example, create easy-to-speak personas for your newcomers and challenge experienced salespeople with hard-to-crack AI buyers.
Step 2: Set the goal of the sales role-play
Ask yourself: what do I want my sales rep to achieve? And write the prompt to give AI an understanding of the practice's desired endgame.
Example 1:
My sales reps need to re-engage with the churned customer and try to book the demo with our regional account executive.
Example 2:
My rep needs to invite the prospect to an upcoming webinar.
Example 3:
My rep needs to help fix the issue on the client side and upsell our premium support package.
Step 3: Describe the role-play background
This is another essential part for the AI to understand its role.
When will reps ask discovery questions during the practice, and where will AI buyers get the answers?
It can freestyle and generate responses based on the profile that you described before.
But if you want sales reps to face the particular case, giving AI extra info is always better.
We recommend to stick to this format:
Explain the current state, customer challenges/pains/desires/goals, what happened before the call/meeting
Example for B2B folks:
Currently, Quantum company is using Salesforce as their CRM. Still, they lack a call recording feature to streamline the coaching of reps. Besides, David posted on LinkedIn which services people suggest, and somebody recommended checking out Gong and Zoominfo. Our sales rep decided to give a call.
Example for recruitment agency:
David is considering switching the job and filled out the application on our site. Previously, he had a 150k annual salary and was looking for a company in telecommunications.
Step 4: Set the criteria to win the conversation
Now, let's keep your role-play goal in mind.
What is the right way for your sales rep to achieve it?
Give this information to AI to understand if your representative is doing a fantastic job or failing during the practice.
Basic example for the cold call:
- My rep will need to introduce themself and explain the reason for reaching out;
- Ask discovery questions about the prospect's current challenges;
- Handle objections;
- Give a quick overview of the product and present how we meet customer needs;
- Give a call-to-action and invite a persona to the demo.
💡 Pro tip:
If you want your person to meet specific sales standards (or follow the script), give more details:
Example
My rep will need to ask open-ended questions on budget, authority, timeline, and needs. To complete discovery, they must ask "what if" and "how do you make sure" questions.
(Repeat the same with other parts of the conversation)
Step 5: Add objections and challenges
Sales coaches and leaders love this part. It's the #1 reason they are looking for AI role-playing.
Give AI the list of possible objections to work with to make sure reps are polishing the hard parts of the conversation and will not screw the same situation on the calls or meetings.
Example
- It's expensive, and I expected this project would cost 35k;
- I am happy with the current solution;
- I am in a hurry. Send me the email;
- I need to talk with my manager before making the payment.
💡 Pro tip:
To go one step further, explain AI how your salespeople would ideally handle objections:
Example
"I expected this project would cost 35k."
The rep should acknowledge the issue, ask what they compare this price to, and justify the cost by giving a successful case.
Bottom line:
Now you have the prompts to turn AI into your customer and practice with sales reps. Let's move to the next step: which tool to choose to upload them.
Tools to create AI role-plays
How to create AI role-play for sales training with ChatGPT
With the recent OpenAI updates, you can build your GPT to practice AI role-plays with the sales team. Here are the steps on how to make practice space with the prompts we have:
1) Go to chat.openai.com/gpts/editor to build the AI role-play GPT and start with the "Create" tab
2) Insert the prompts we've created before. Here is structure you need:
Let's practice sales conversation.
Your role is customer {Give the name}, and you are:
{insert the AI persona profile};
User will be sales representative of {Write your company name} and the goal is {insert the goal of the role-play};
Background of this coversation:
{insert the role-play background};
To achieve the goal, sales rep needs to complete these steps:
{Insert the criteria to win};
Additionally, you will give these objections during your conversation:
{Insert your list};
The user will start the conversation with an introduction, and you should respond with {Write the first sentences for the AI buyer}.
Here is an example of the full prompt:
As you submit the prompt, GPT will build the scenario and give you a response like this.
3) Now go to the "Configure" tab, give the name to your GPT, and add the photo. You can use DALL·E or upload a custom image.
4) We are all set! You have GPT ready to do AI role-play with your team. Now click on "Save" and pick "Only people with a link" unless you want your competitors or anybody else to do your role-plays :D
Share the link with the team and let them tackle the practice with an AI persona.
Are there any downsides to doing AI role-plays with GPT?
- You have to pay $20 for everybody to access your custom GPTs.
- Feedback is a crucial part of AI sales training. There are no scorecards, coaching comments, or recommendations for your reps as they finish practice.
- No visibility or dashboards for the managers to follow the progress of the team.
- Ultimately, it's chat with no option to do video role-play. It might be suitable only for LinkedIn or emailing practice.
How should you build AI role-plays to achieve a sales team better performance?
More and more companies seeking sales improvement are using AI solutions like PitchMonster to role-play at scale and win more deals.
AI sales training with PitchMonster
PitchMonster is a sales training platform that helps streamline role-plays with AI and provides feedback tailored to coaching standards:
- It allows you to simulate any sales call: cold calls, discoveries, demo meetings, and hard-hitting questions with custom buyer personas.
- Upload your ideal buyer persona to the AI role-play, add background information to perform robust discovery, and configure the criteria to win the role-play. Send to an individual or cover the AI coaching for 100% of the team.
- AI-generated avatars will create an immersive experience for the training, replicating your real customer.
- PitchMonster's core advantage is advanced feedback capabilities. The AI coach breaks down filler words, sales, and tech-language cliches with each role-play attempt.
- AI platform automatically assesses every salesperson's role-play scorecard. You can upload the metrics you are already using in real conversations.
- Using PitchMonster is fun, allowing sales reps to decrease their onboarding time, easily align with product knowledge, and achieve revenue growth with easy-to-scale practice.
Guide recap for AI sales onboarding and training with role-plays
To recap, follow these steps to design AI role-plays for sales or customer-facing teams.
- Prepare AI buyer persona. Add name, job title, background, and some personality characteristics.
- Think about the desired endgame of the role-play your rep must get to.
- Define the background of role-play. What is going on in the buyer's company currently, or what were the events that preceded the call
- Set the conditions on how to achieve the goal.
- Add a list of objections and how the rep should ideally handle them.
- Upload your AI role-play prompts to custom GPT or take advantage of PitchMonster.io technology.
- Coach the team and get more deals.
