Sales organizations face a critical moment with artificial intelligence (AI), so leaders must operationalize this technology to solve specific business problems. We have moved past the initial hype phase, and the industry is now entering a period of practical application. Today, incoming sales professionals expect modern training methods to provide quick paths to hitting their revenue goals. Consequently, new hires will no longer tolerate outdated onboarding programs consisting of long online coursework. Companies must adapt their programs to include these new interactive learning formats.
In this podcast episode, I spoke with Kelly Lewis, Co-founder of Revenue Insiders, about integrating AI into sales readiness. She brings deep experience as a former sales representative and a current revenue enablement leader. Together, we discuss the shift toward bite-sized training formats and the use of AI role-play for daily coaching conversations.
During our conversation, Kelly highlighted a fresh approach to adult learning. As she rightly pointed out, we are all consuming information in quick bursts today. Our sales training must absolutely match this daily reality. Nudge enablement delivers interactive learning directly into the daily workflow to keep reps active in the field.
For example, if a new tariff policy drops, you can instantly send an SMS or a Slack message to educate your team on objection handling. This approach uses a quick text or a short video to keep teams updated right at the beginning of their day. Sellers receive timely information to maintain their momentum, and enablement leaders gain the agility to adjust content on the fly based on real-time feedback.
Furthermore, this bite-sized format allows for incredible personalization. Forcing adult learners through a two-hour course covering material they already know is highly ineffective. We now have the tools to cohort people based on their actual skills. This capability allows us to deliver highly relevant materials specifically tailored to each seller's individual development journey.
As Kelly and I discussed, AI offers immense value for our frontline sales managers. We currently provide our leaders with abundant performance data. They can easily view pipeline metrics and deal velocity to identify struggling representatives. At the same time, many managers lack the formal training to turn that data into effective coaching. Kelly pointed out the clear difference between giving basic feedback and delivering true coaching. Telling a rep to make ten more calls is just feedback. Real coaching involves asking the right questions to uncover exactly what is holding them back.
These vital coaching conversations are notoriously difficult to navigate without proper practice. In traditional live role-play scenarios, counterparts often throw softballs and fail to push the manager. AI role-play tools give these leaders a dedicated space to practice difficult performance discussions. The AI acts as a dedicated tool programmed to throw hard questions and unexpected curveballs. These realistic simulations allow managers to hone their critical thinking skills repeatedly before sitting down with a team member.
This technology also helps leaders diagnose the root cause of poor performance. By overlaying conversation intelligence with performance data, we can accurately determine if a rep faces a skill gap or a motivational hurdle. From there, managers can deploy the exact right intervention to guide that seller toward success.
Integrating AI into the onboarding journey significantly cuts the required ramp time for new hires. We can comfortably offload the standard knowledge transfer to bite-sized forms and AI role-play. This allows sellers to complete assignments and consume educational videos asynchronously at their own pace.
Once they complete those digital tasks, we bring everyone together for live coaching sessions where the real magic happens. Face-to-face time shifts away from basic knowledge transfer to become a dedicated opportunity to ask questions and build relationships. People are simply more successful and tend to stay at their jobs longer when they feel properly connected to their peers. We must prioritize maintaining that deep personal connection within the initial hiring cohort.
Kelly noted a fascinating concept about this new timeline. The overall onboarding journey actually becomes longer while the specific ramp to productivity shrinks. Leaders can use their freed-up bandwidth to schedule mini boot camps and intentional check-ins at the three-month and six-month marks. I always tell our teams that sales is an open-book test. We want reps leveraging what works for others, and they easily discover those best practices during these intentional human interactions.
Ray Makela and Kelly Lewis discuss integrating artificial intelligence into sales enablement. They detail how leaders can operationalize these tools for modern coaching and accelerated onboarding.