What is AI sales training?

It’s hard to find a bigger drain on an organization’s finances than sales training.

In the US alone, around $20 billion is spent on sales training and enablement each year. And yet, do you know how 75% of all sales reps prefer to learn? In actual sales conversations—where they make their mistakes on actual leads.

The expensive misapplication of sales training explains why so many reps are missing their target—as many as 91% of them, according to Quotapath. They’re burning through their pipeline learning in real sales meetings that should be practice meetings.

Which brings us to a time-tested way of training salespeople: roleplay. Salespeople have long sharpened their skills through roleplay, whether with peers, managers, or mentors. But let’s be honest: that old-school approach is clunky, awkward, and limited.

As former HubSpot VP, Andrew Quinn, told us: “Most managers want to coach more. In my experience working with sales managers to develop their skills, one of the things they typically like about the job is coaching and helping reps practice to get better. They just can’t get to it.“

Almost half (47%) of sales managers spend less than 30 minutes a week coaching each of their sellers. Not from a lack of desire; but from a lack of time.

It’s not much easier for reps, though the challenges are different. You’re relying on someone else’s calendar, energy, and willingness to roleplay. Even then, roleplaying is often awkward and full of the wrong types of pressure. It struggles to simulate a real sales conversation, with reps understandably more focused on how they’re coming across to their peers or managers than they are on learning.

Across the entire sales function, AI is now helping teams do much more. And when it comes to the impact on quota attainment and ROI, its biggest impact is arguably on sales training. 

What is AI sales training? A smarter way to practice

AI sales training uses large language models (LLMs) and generative AI to simulate lifelike buyer interactions. Think of it like a batting cage for sales reps. Instead of practicing your pitch on a live prospect (and risking striking out), reps can log into a platform and rehearse conversations in a low-risk, high-feedback environment—any time, as often as they like.

Some tools simulate basic phone calls or chat interactions. Others, like UneeQ Sales Trainer, take things further with full 3D avatars capable of nuanced, emotionally rich dialogue. Our CGI digital humans make reps feel like they’re in a real conversation, helping them build muscle memory for everything from discovery calls, onsite meetings, to late-stage objections.

AI roleplay is all about mimicking the feeling of being in a real sales meeting, but without the risk to your pipeline.

How is AI training different from the traditional approach?

In the traditional world, reps had to buddy up, or schedule time with their manager to roleplay. That time is limited, often awkward, and rarely consistent. 

AI sales coaching removes those constraints. Reps can train privately, without fear or embarrassment. 

And managers? They can spend less time roleplaying and more time reviewing performance data and giving personalized coaching. 

Because the best baseball coaches don’t throw every practice pitch for their batters. They spend their time looking at data from the batting cages to understand their players better—who’s struggling, how are they struggling, and who’s ready for the big game.

What are the benefits of AI sales training?

The benefits of using AI in sales training are broad, so *deep breath* here are a few reasons why sales teams are embracing it:

• Improved onboarding: Ideal for getting new reps up to speed, structured AI roleplay accelerates onboarding by teaching new starters how to sell your way.
• It scales in ways people can’t: Every rep can train with an AI when and how often they need to.
• It saves time: Managers save time scheduling and running roleplay sessions—time they can better spend on direct coaching and mentorship.
• It protects your pipeline: Reps can practice before they even meet a prospect, with sessions tailored to your buyers and sales goals.
• It adds structure: Consistency is key to learning, but roleplay used to be sporadic and likely to fall through. AI roleplay means no more missed sessions due to someone else having a calendar conflict.
• It cuts costs: Roleplay used to cost the time of two or more employees, or a coach, for however long the session took. Now everyone can roleplay with an AI for a fraction of the cost, without the need to travel.
• It has better outcomes: Our platform has a 95% training effectiveness score, compared to 78% in traditional learning.
• It’s more enjoyable: Gamified environments mean reps actually use it. For instance, our 94% user recommendation score is 3x higher than traditional learning.
• It improves retention of information: Learning by doing is highly effective. Our AI coaching platform improves knowledge recall by up to 200%.
• Up-levels the aspiring middle: Sales teams are comprised of the top 20% who are high performers, bottom 20%, and 60% who are underperforming. With the right practice and support, the 60% can rise to top performance.
  

What are the best AI roleplay sales training tools?

There are plenty of tools emerging in the AI sales training space. Some use deepfake avatars to simulate lifelike faces, but that approach has its limitations. While photorealism can be impressive at first, deepfakes often fall into the uncanny valley, and are becoming increasingly seen as a concerning use of AI technology. Adding to that, they rarely offer the depth or emotional range needed to create truly engaging conversations. Which is why we’ve taken a different, more enjoyable, approach.

At UneeQ, it took us 10 years to make your sales team better in 10 minutes. A decade’s worth of research, development, and success for our enterprise clients is built into UneeQ Sales Trainer.

• Gamified experience: The multi-hundred-billion-dollar video game industry teaches us a lot about the value of engagement. Our CGI digital humans are built for that very purpose—for engagement and fun, not to be weird or uncomfortable like photoreal AI. Our platform is also gamified to keep reps consistently coming back and improving.
• Next-level customization: All our research taught us that each sales team is different. From creating buyer personas and unique goals to reporting and analytics, UneeQ Sales trainer offers the flexibility sales leaders need to make a major difference in the performance of their teams. 
• Purpose-built for training success: We’re not a generic LLM wrapped in a synthetic face. We’ve spent a decade creating emotionally intelligent, fully 3D digital humans—offering realism and sophistication that deepfake startups can’t match.
• Future-ready: Deepfake avatars are 2D and flat. Digital humans are fully 3D and built to move, gesture, and exist in spatial environments. As the world moves toward immersive training experiences, our platform is ready to lead.
• Proven success: UneeQ’s platform has a 95% training effectiveness score, and a 3X user preference over traditional training tools.

What to demand of your AI training software

Let us make your life easier as you compare AI sales roleplay tools. Here are some key questions to ask of the providers you’re considering.

1. How much personality can be added to the AI persona? 

It’s our view that the AI buyers your team roleplay with should be as close to the real thing as possible. For that, sales leaders can specify who their buyers are within a leading platform like UneeQ Sales Trainer.

For instance, let’s say you sell accounting software to coffee shop owners. You may want to specify how busy they are, their general lack of accounting knowledge, how many staff they tend to employ, and how many locations they run. The more detail you add, the more close to real life the AI personalities will be.

And hey, if you need help setting up your first scenarios, our team can jump on a call to help!

2. How customizable are the sales scenarios?

Similarly, your platform of choice needs to offer the customizability to be useful for you and your team. So be sure to probe the extent of this customization.

At very least, you should be able to customize your buyer persona, goals, deal stage, sales methodologies, industry, and objectives of the simulation as well as how they are assessed.

Also make sure you can create multiple training scenarios for different teams, buyers, or deal stages. As your team grows, you’ll want training to be more tailored for each.

3. How useful are the analytics?

Analytics should come in at least two broad categories. User analytics, so reps can see how they’ve performed and what they need to work on; and team-wide analytics, so managers and leaders can better understand their workforce.

Some of the most useful insights come from learning the unique styles of reps when they’re in a comfortable selling environment. For instance, some may be speaking too much instead of asking open-ended questions and listening. Others might be amazing at discovery because they’re active listeners but fall short when it comes to closing, relying too much on technique and not addressing tension head-on.

Ultimately, that all leads to better insights for greater team leadership. Sales leaders get to see which reps are, say, dazzling at discovery and which are closing machines.

4. Can I create roleplay scenarios to match our sales processes?

Yes, yes you should be able to—and you can in UneeQ Sales Trainer. If the platform you’re considering simply offers broad, out-of-the-box sales conversations that don’t match your processes or methodologies, you’re in the wrong place.

5. Is the AI roleplay realistic?

You will be able to get a good feel for this by demoing the product. Be aware, some AI roleplay tools only simulate a generic and flat voice of the buyer. You may want to use an option like this if your sales team never meets people in person, face-to-face, or on a video call.

While you’re assessing realism, also assess how creepy the avatar might come across to your reps. No leader wants to see their sales training metrics plummet because reps are too distracted with glitchy deepfakes straight from their nightmares.

6. Does the roleplay product coach as well as simulate buyer conversations?

We’ve mentioned how time-poor leaders are. They won’t be able to focus on the higher-value tasks if they’re constantly trawling through transcripts of sales calls—not to mention the time for ride-alongs with their field reps. Instead, you’ll probably want the AI to do some of the high-level coaching. UneeQ Sales Trainer, for instance, will let reps know immediately after the call how well they did in meeting the goals sales leaders set—as well as many other broad metrics that will help them learn in the moment, not retrospectively.

7. Will my reps actually use it?

One of the biggest problems with current sales training and enablement tools is that reps want to sell. They want to sell, they want to hit quota, make commission and continue to grow. They don’t want to watch videos or complete training seminars.

Any sales training platform will tell you your reps will love it. But ask for proof. For example, UneeQ Sales Trainer has a user recommendation score of 95%. Why? Because reps actually enjoy selling. So we simulate realistic sales conversations. We create gamified, structured, but fun environments in which they can sell and learn at the same time. 

How much do AI training tools cost?

AI sales training is the next evolution of enablement. It’s scalable, smart, and built for how modern reps actually want to learn.

And it can help sales teams dramatically reduce the billions spent globally while improving the effectiveness of their reps and reinforcing existing methodologies.

Our AI sales training pricing scales depending on the size of your team. We’d be more than happy to discuss your needs and provide a price on a short demo call.

Or if you’d rather get hands-on first, we offer a free trial, which you can request by clicking here.