MindTickle Announces AI-enhancements to Virtual Role Play for Remote Skills Development

Sales enablement and readiness including new Model Pitch provides self-guided practice to develop the skills of remote customer-facing representatives

MindTickle, the leader in Sales Readiness technology, announced new AI-enhancements to their Missions virtual role-play to help customer-facing reps develop and practice effective hard and soft skills necessary to be effective no matter where they are. Today’s environment requires customer-facing employees to be ready to deliver the right message consistently across online channels to successfully engage prospects and customers, even if they’re remote. Missions virtual role play enhanced by AI provides a system for contextual feedback and accelerates improvement cycles against the desired baseline. The solution automatically highlights areas for improvement and enables sales enablement admins and managers to provide high-value coaching and feedback from improvement in real-time.

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“At e-Builder, we take pride in delivering a consistently exceptional level of customer experience and MindTickle has been extremely effective at ensuring our sales teams are capable of that goal,” said Jon Antevy, co-founder at e-Builder, Inc. “We can ensure our sellers are engaging with our training, have demonstrated comprehension, proficiency and capability in being on message, and can be effective in the real world. The AI-powered capabilities of auto-reviews, including analysis of keywords, filler words, and cadence helps reps improve their practice sessions before they submit role plays. And for reviewers, the insights allow them to quickly identify and develop the necessary knowledge and skills for our reps to be successful. The new Model Pitch offering takes the value even further by allowing us to show what the ideal message and delivery looks like and creates a framework to systematically develop those attributes.”

“Missions” virtual role-play allows sellers to develop their skills through practice voice-over slideshow, video role-play, email and task execution, and voice-over screen share in one unified experience tied to training, knowledge reinforcement and coaching. MindTickle’s lead in the market has been demonstrated by advances in AI and machine learning capabilities, enhancing the user experience, as well as enabling user management at enterprise scale. This includes automated transcription, keyword and sentiment analysis, filler words, as well as length and speech pace. MindTickle’s new Model Pitch capability builds on these capabilities allowing admins to now add a ‘Model Pitch’ to Missions to provide a best practice example for users. The Model Pitch can be created by leadership, product marketing, or brand marketing teams to ensure consistent messaging and maximize brand value. The AI-enhanced assistance automatically transcribes and extracts keywords from the Model Pitch, reducing Admin’s manual effort and streamlining the Mission creation process.

According to the Forrester SiriusDecisions Research Brief, The Economics of Sales Talent: Improving Rep Quality, the authors state:

Various technology platforms (e.g. video coaching, e-learning solutions, gamification applications) provide modern, digital- and Millennial-friendly formats for interactive sales competency learning and validation. Organizations that report highly effective video role-play deployments are 120 percent more likely than others to achieve their annual team-wide sales quota. Sales enablement must incorporate coaching tools into reps’ initial training. This is particularly important for sales professionals, whose eventual success is heavily influenced by how they interact with prospects and buyers. It also provides an opportunity to quickly identify individuals who are unlikely to succeed in the role for which they were hired.

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The benefits of AI-enhanced virtual role play is that customer-facing reps can refer to the Model Pitch before attempting the Mission exercise and practice the best-in-class messaging recommended by their organization. Once a Mission draft is recorded, instant AI-based feedback helps Learners easily identify gaps in keywords to use, words to avoid, speech pace, submission length, and filler word usage. Similarly, reviewers whether they admins, managers, or coaches, can now provide feedback by comparing the reps’ submissions to the standard set by the Model Pitch.

“Being remote and ready means skills development has to happen remotely as well. Doing this virtually at enterprise scale effectively requires a modern, AI-enhanced approach,” said Nishant Mungali, chief product officer at MindTickle. “Virtual skill development is not just operationally efficient but we are making it more comprehensive and effective through technology innovation. MindTickle is preparing sales reps to be on message and on task every time, no matter where they are in the sales process or the customer’s buying journey.”

“Missions is particularly relevant for customer-facing teams that more than ever before need to be ready to engage with and advise prospects and customers, whether they continue to operate within the confines of an online interaction or in the future, in person,” said Gopkiran Rao, chief strategy and marketing officer at MindTickle. “With decentralized sales forces, managers don’t have the chance to do live shadowing and observation, role plays or discussions. Reps and managers are in different time zones and meeting less often, yet new tools, skills, or knowledge training still need to be rolled out. The only way to accomplish all of this and drive toward faster time to field readiness is to leverage a systematic and data-driven approach to onboarding, skills development, training, coaching and ongoing readiness.”

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