Why AI Role-Play Is the Missing Piece in Sales Training with Neha Gupta

Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. This week I have Neha Gupta on the show. Neha is the founder and CEO of Breakthrough AI and here's what grabbed me about her story. Her dad came to the US from India to get his PhD in operations research. Her mom worked as an optician in Walmart and Kaiser helping people pick out glasses and that's where she said watching her mom navigate those conversations and figuring out how to connect with people and how to sell them one pair of glasses over another, that was her real first experience in sales.

Then she went to Stanford and then moved to New York and started working at places like Oliver Wyman, Unilever, Clorox and she realized something in her corporate journey, that people who get ahead in big organizations are not the ones with the best ideas. They're the ones who can communicate, persuade, and influence and there is no playbook for learning how to do that. So we get into why training doesn't stick, why managers are expected to coach but nobody teaches them how and how AI role play can actually solve a problem that human role play never could. We also get into the psychology why people freeze in high stakes conversations and what repetition does to change that. And we get into a real back and forth conversation about whether AI can replace the coaching that used to happen through osmosis when we were all sitting in the office and working in the whole pen together.

This one's a real interesting one, so I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Neha Gupta, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. How are you doing today? I'm good. Thank you so much for having me on here. Yeah, thanks for joining. This is going to be an interesting conversation around what I've said is I think my favorite application of AI, which is AI role playing if done right, but we're going to get to that. But Neha, as we always do here on the Make It Happen Monday podcast, love to hear your origin story. I know you're a child of immigrants, but I don't know much before your Stanford time. So talk to us about your influences where you grew up, your parents, all that fun stuff so we can get a sense and then we'll kind of go through your career because you've got a pretty interesting one here.

Yeah, I grew up in, I was born and raised in California, so born in Northern California, grew up in Southern California. So you would think that would feel pretty diverse, but it really wasn't back in the 80s, I would say, wasn't very diverse. So, you know, I didn't really feel like I had a lot of exposure to as many different cultures and stuff as you would hope and thinking about Southern California. And so my main thought was like, how do I get out of here? Basically, how do I like get out, see more of the world, just like experience something outside of Orange County in California, which is, you know, one very specific type of person it felt like. So I left, I didn't go very far. I went to Stanford, you know, obviously just to Northern California, but being closer to San Francisco and tech and stuff like it just definitely started opening my eyes to there is a lot more to actually explore.

I then moved to New York City right after graduation, actually. So I decided I needed to see the other coast. I needed to be somewhere else. I needed to see what that was all about. And that honestly, coming from Southern California and even Northern California, it was sort of a big shock. New York City is probably the exact opposite. Everyone moves at double the speed, talks at double the speed. Um, I started in management consulting and all of the other analysts in my class had already worked in investment banking, had already worked in Wall Street, had already been consulting as summer internships. And my summer internship was working in DC trying to, uh, see if we could pass a bill, uh, for example.

So like nothing related to actual Wall Street type of stuff. Um, so it was definitely very eye opening to be like, oh, okay. So not, I'm like in the hub of like where all this business activity is happening. And I remember feeling just kind of like drinking from the hose of, okay, I have to now present myself a certain way. I'm wearing a suit for the first time. I need to speak up in meetings and I'm feeling really intimidated. Like all of these things that like, you're not seeing someone go to like a corporate job every day growing up, then having to sort of experience a very corporate job right out of undergrad. And like I said, not really, you know, thinking about corporate life at all. It was definitely really jarring for me.

So I had to learn really quickly from that. So you said you didn't see it. So where, if you don't mind me asking, where were your parents actually from? Where did they immigrate from? Yeah, they immigrated from India. Um, my dad came here to do his PhD in, uh, what is it? In operations research, which I don't even know if anyone does that anymore. Uh, so he did work, um, at a company for a while, but he was also a professor, um, and taught statistics and computer science, those types of things. So I would see him basically going to the university mainly and teaching. And then my mom was more like she, um, would work as an optomet, not an optometrist, sorry, an optician, which is the people that go and help you pick out your glasses.

So I would see her go, she worked at Walmart, she worked at Kaiser here in California, and she'd be there helping people like better understand their prescriptions. And honestly, it's a little bit of a sales role. So I would see her go into how does she sell this one pair of glasses versus another and why, you know, customer service, why have them come back, especially when you're at a place like Walmart is a lot of sales, especially. So I did sort of pick up on some of those sales type of influences and how do you engage with somebody? How do you, you know, all walks of life, walking in the door, that type of thing. So that was definitely a big influence as well. Cause, cause your degree was in psychology at Stanford.

It was psychology with a, was it psychology? The minor economics was the major in psychology. The reverse. Yeah. It was economics with a minor in psychology. Yeah. Yeah. And I just did that because it seemed interesting, not because I thought that it would actually be a great fit for marketing and sales. Yeah. Talk about a perfect fit. Like I wish I had gone back and taken psychology. And at this point, I think most people need to take psychology just to understand, but I'm kind of curious with your, you know, the, the education of psychology and then the real education of psychology when you're in the real world, right? There's, there's a lot of difference when you're learning it from a book.

And then you're thrown into, was it Oliver Wyman and then Priceline and you're an analyst and you're in those meetings. So what did, what did college not teach you about communication, about, you know, presence and those types of things? What did it miss? You know, college really, I think taught me literally nothing about those things, right? I mean, I was like, I mean, economics is a big major at Stanford. So we were in huge, uh, halls with maybe 200, 300 other kids. We're listening to a lecture. We're doing, you know, problem sets for economics. So you're very much like barely interacting with anyone who's a place of authority, right? Like maybe you're TA a little bit, but they're usually just like a couple of years older than you.

Almost never are you actually interacting with a professor. So it doesn't really teach you how to like actually push back on an idea or present your ideas to someone who's at a different level than you, right? You're used to sort of speaking with peers in college and even in high school, et cetera, but you never really learn because most people don't go and meet with their professors very much. And they don't engage in this sort of debate or pushback type of thing. So you're not learning how to talk to a manager level person, a director level person, someone who's higher up in the organization who you respect, but also have your own ideas and want to be able to engage that way. So that's something that I don't think college does a very good job at all.

And how to sort of present your ideas in a way that engage debate and discussion and collaboration a lot of times in economics, especially it was problem sets. It wasn't group project work. I think maybe that's shifted more and, you know, more recently. But at least for us, it was very much that psychology definitely helped, you know, because it was a little bit of at least understanding how humans think and biases, especially that they might have. So that was really helpful, but it didn't necessarily teach you how to identify whether you're seeing bias or anything else in the person and the conversation that you're having. Right. So it doesn't really teach you how to apply all of this book learning in the real world.

I felt like. Yeah, that's I've always struggled with undergrad. Grad is a different story. I think grad, you know, MBAs and those types of things, that's where you're like, I want to learn this. So now you're consciously engaged and hopefully the teaching environment is a lot different. But undergrad, I've always said, is it's a really good social education. But as far as an actual education, like I went to school for marketing and there isn't a single thing that when I graduated with my marketing degree that I was applicable in the real world. I was like, oh, OK. So I mean, I'll go in business school, I would say the main thing that we taught what we learned was how to do a good presentation.

There you go. They would like have us do a presentation in front of a video tape, basically. And watch, watch yourself. Presentations is so awkward. And basically, you know, self-critique yourself. I mean, you know, your professor would kind of point things out, but then obviously your self-critique. You never needed, you never needed the professor. You don't really get like that same, again, that role play practice doesn't really happen. It's still a lot of theory. I mean, because that's what professors like to sort of deal in, I feel like. And so even at the business school, I felt like it didn't help as much. Well, even as a trainer, I mean, you hear, you know, if you can't do it, teach it.

Right. So, I mean, that's why for me, I'm very conscious of, I don't, when people say like, what do you, what do you do? I'm like, I'm, and they think I'm a trainer. I'm like, I'm not, I'm a sales rep who happens to train. Like I'm out there selling every day, learning, like, you know, failing, figuring things out. And I just happen to be okay at transferring some of that knowledge to other people. But it's like, I, but the last, I actually never wanted to be in training when I got the opportunity because my perception of trainers was always, they were either failed sales professionals or professional presenters. And I'm like, I just didn't want to be that person. Yeah. But there's just so many of them out there.

Yeah. For you, when did it, was there a moment where it kind of dawned on you that there was no playbook for learning how to communicate at the executive level for, you know, learning how to really engage in, in, in the corporate world? Was there ever, was there a moment where you're like, man, I need to figure this stuff out. Cause this, I, this is not, this is foreign to me. Yeah. I would say probably once I got into management, I would say, so I worked also at the nonprofit called the new teacher project where we were trying to recruit individuals from all sorts of backgrounds, lawyers, administrative assistants, et cetera, to quit their jobs and become teachers in New York city. And so I learned a lot about marketing, but the sales piece of that was recruitment.

So we'd have to actually convince someone, Hey, leave this job that you have and actually come a public school teacher where you probably aren't going to be as much, that type of thing. So we definitely learned a lot about sales there, but I had a team of three under me. So I had three recruiters reporting into me. I'm 25 and now managing three people had never managed people before my life. And I had underperformance issues as managers tend to have. And so I was like, I have no clue what to say, honestly. I mean, I'm just like, I want this person to perform better. I also needed to figure out like whether this is the right fit for them, whether this is the right organization for them, all of those things and no playbook in hand.

So at the time, I honestly just sort of spoke from the heart to her and try to really connect as a human being. That actually seemed to go well, to be honest, but it was like not something that I had been taught, had never learned. There was nothing to, you know, I could read something maybe about how to handle that, but it wasn't the same as like also figuring out how that person might react. And then what do I say next, you know? Yeah. And so as you grew, so did kind of communication become a passion for you or, cause you, you kind of then went to, what was it? You were the chief brand strategist over at Bellyfire. Yeah. I mean, you worked at Unilever and a few other places, and then you kind of got into the market development, market development teams.

So where did you kind of find this passion for, for communication? Yeah. So I think the passion really came from my work at Unilever and then Clorox, honestly, these are huge organizations, right? So they're matrix and you have to do a lot of influencing of your ideas, even happening. So even if you have a good idea, smart, capable, if you're not really good at persuading and influence, then pretty much nothing happens. And you just get maybe stuck on projects that you don't really want to work on, that type of thing. So I really got into communication after I saw that it didn't really matter, like what my pedigree was. At the end of the day, the people who did well were those who were strong communicators, who could really connect with people, who could really influence why their idea was a good one to pursue.

And so I sort of saw that from those who were, you know, a little bit ahead of me, but I also saw that with my peers and seeing that like, oh, some of my peers are doing really well. What is it about them that's really helping their career progress? And I realized it was because of their communication skills, about their way to feel like part of the team and also being able to like present their ideas with the data or the, you know, stories or whatever it may be, because there's so many different ways that you can present an idea, but how do you really influence? So those that are higher up and making those decisions. So I would say it was that sort of moment when I was in a larger organization that I saw, you can have all these resources and all this training because we got a ton of training.

It's still not addressing this very important need, which is how do you influence and persuade others? So that's really where I started studying it a lot more and reading, watching videos, going to trainings. I became sort of a kind of a junkie in this area, I would say, and just trying to ingest as much as I possibly could, because I wanted to have those frameworks at least, you know, in my mind and know like, okay, I could hopefully rely on that framework in the right moment. Yeah. So how to win friends and influence people. Exactly. I think that's the foundation for every book of type of communication still there. So then let's talk about what you're doing now. Did you ever have an itch to do a startup?

Did you like, where did that come? Because you go from corporate, right? These huge, you know, safe environment, relatively structured. Now you're breakthrough AI trying to figure out how to build something. Where, where did that itch come from before? Was it because of this where you were like, I got to solve this problem? Or were you like, I have this itch to start do a startup and this is a good idea. This seems like a good idea. Yeah, so I have done a startup, you know, in a couple of different places and not as like a founder, but I had like, I worked at Priceline Webhouse Club when it was small. I was employee number five there. So I had kind of seen how much of an impact you can make working at small organizations.

So I started after working at big corporate places, realized I really like going back to small organizations and being able to make that impact. I did belly fire branding, which was me and three other people for about a decade. And that's where I also got to see sort of the client side of communication. So internal influence, but then also how do you, you know, influence your, first of your client to even just sign on and, you know, pay for your project. Second, how do you do sort of expansion type of conversations with them? So like it's project-based work you're constantly looking for. How do I keep the revenue going? But also just like, how do you get them to believe that your strategy is the right one?

How do you get them to believe that the results that you got from a survey were actually accurate and stuff like that? So how do you really present yourself as an expert? So I would say corporate world, I learned internal communications really well, but then by being at a marketing agency, I got to learn external communications. And so I went to Savor Life after that, which is a small fintech. I got really exposed to the tech side there. So I had never really worked in tech. I'd worked in packaged goods, services, that type of thing. But then I saw how tech can basically make an idea come to life very quickly. In packaged goods, you know, even on a very fast timeline, we could release a new product in anywhere.

Very fast is like seven to nine months. Most of the time it takes like 15 months. So it's slow. But in tech, like you can have an idea. And within like a week or two, it's out there and you're seeing how people respond. And so for my personality, honestly, I just loved that fast pace. And I learned, I just absorbed everything I put on like, how do you work with engineers? How, what does product mean? All of these things that I've been thinking about in marketing, in terms of design, et cetera, I was like, oh, now I can do that on like turbo speed with tech. And I also continue to see was an organization of about 25 people that in a small organization, there just isn't the resources to really train folks, to coach them even.

Like you want managers to coach, but managers are stretched thin, really thin these days. So for them to find the time to role play and coach every single individual, it just doesn't happen. And you're assuming it is, but it really doesn't happen. So that's where I really felt like, okay, the technology is finally at a place where we could do something really cool. And that need is huge. It doesn't matter what size organization that you're at. Like people have a lot to learn in this space. Yeah. I think that, especially now things are talking about moving fast. Holy smokes. But you're right. Like the, I think frontline managers have one of the hardest jobs in, in the profession, in any profession because almost, they're almost never, uh, promoted because they were the most organized person that can translate their ideas.

They were almost always promoted because they were the best at whatever that thing was, but inevitably, whoever is the best at that thing, my experience is usually a bit of more of an artist than they are a scientist. And so it's really hard for them to translate that knowledge of just how they communicate and how the, you know, the interpersonal skills, I mean, I, I think there's, when people talk about natural born sales professionals, um, when I say this, I mean all for all the right reasons, not like the douchey, you can sell ice to Eskimos, gross person. Right. But, but like the genuine person that can just walk into a room and you like, they almost have an aura about them where like everybody's attracted to them.

They want to be their friend. They just know when to ask the right questions. And, you know, I, there's two people that I know in my entire 30 years of business, there's two people I know that have fit that category. One of them is my mentor, Jeff Hoffman. Uh, and the other is my uncle who lives out in San Francisco, actually, um, Los Altos Hills. And, and it is so hard to replicate that. And so to the rest of us, it's more of a science, but going back to these managers, not only are they not given the tools and, and, and training to learn how to coach, they're not given the time. So we're going to, we're going to skip to the, the AI version, but. You know, I'm going to pick on Gong here for a second.

Yeah. Gong's great. Records the calls, but that their value proposition, at least previously before the AI stuff came out, it was like, oh, well you could just skip to, uh, the pricing section of the car. No, you can't because what they said at pricing at minute 25, probably something at around minute five or six is what dictated that conversation at minute 25. So I have to listen to the whole thing. And they're like, oh no, you have to, you can listen on 1.5 X or 2 X. Just no, you can't. Because tonality matters, inflection matters, how they said, what they said matters. So if I have a 30 minute call, that's 30 minutes of listening to that call. And then it's at least 15 minutes of coaching.

And I have five reps on my team who have 10 calls a week. Like that's a full time job. Exactly. So that's why they just revert to being deal chasers and coaching doesn't happen. Even though coaching every, every data, every statistic there is out there says that the number one thing you can do to improve results is coach. So that's why I'm so bullish on AI and its ability to, to train and coach because it knows how you learn versus how I learn. Yes. So what, what made that leap for you when you were like, I can solve this problem. The technology's here where, because I want to talk about how you created yours and then where the gaps are right now. Cause I still see the, the, the misapplication of it, quite frankly, and, and, and it's not being set up the right way.

So it's not coaching on the right thing. So how did you determine like, this was the right time and this is the technology that's it's ready to go? I mean, mainly because I think when I've seen role play in the past, which we all have known role play and we've all done it. It's really awkward, you know, uh, and honestly, yeah, it's very awkward. And, um, you're also relying on like the creativity of whoever you're partnered up with, right? Like, are they actually going to be a good role play partner? Who knows? And then the feedback you get is very subjective. I mean, you know, even when a manager is coaching you, right? It's very subjective. It's to like what they've experienced to be good in terms of communication and bad.

And it's all their own ideas. Right. So there's no way to really see how different people are performing on the exact same role play. Cause it's not the exact same role play if you're just doing it, you know, as humans. So what I really loved about AI was like, oh, we finally can have both a very realistic role play, which is really important because when I, when we've done all these pilots, if the role play falls short and being realistic, your mind just kind of knows that and you stop like really treating it as a real situation. But if we can get sort of like the inflection points in someone's voice, all of these things that feel really real, then all of a sudden your brain forgets that you're actually talking to AI and you get really emotionally involved.

And now all of that muscle memory is actually starting to get built. And I don't think before this, like you would see some VR stuff. I know there's been some companies out there that have been doing VR before AI came about, but it all felt pretty clunky. And honestly, this is why we've sort of stayed away from video from now, because it still feels a little bit clunky. Like people's lips are not moving at exactly the same thing. Their faces aren't moving exactly. And again, we're trying to trick your brain into thinking this is a real role play so that you're truly building that muscle memory. And so we really focus on audio and making sure it sounds really realistic, like emotionally realistic.

And so that's one of the things that's sort of different. And so the that's really what drove me to think like we're finally at this place because the audio had at least gotten there. I don't think video is there, honestly, quite yet. Someday, I think soon actually could be, but we're not quite there. You can still kind of tell that this is an avatar. And so I don't really want to engage with something that feels creepy to me. And that so that was going to be my question, because I still think there's just something about AI, even AI written emails, even AI comments on LinkedIn. Like, but they, they, they sound almost perfect, but there's this weird, uh, that I, that I think most humans, like, unless you're completely uneducated about AI and you don't even know what's happening, like you might believe it, but there's just like, something's off about this.

And for me, the AI video role-playing has always kind of been that it's been distracting because I'm now looking at their lips and how, how tight it is. You know what I mean? Like how well it is. And I've always, and it was interesting. I don't want to name the company, but one of the leading pioneers, not one of the big LLMs, but one of the leading pioneers in AI and using AI for training, right? Where you could get an avatar and you could, you know, whatever language that you want, you can do all the training stuff. They reached out to me and cause they found out that their, their number one use case was sales. Um, and the sales reps were the ones that didn't like engaging with their avatars the most because the sales reps just couldn't make the connection to the avatar.

And so they wanted me to have, cause the team followed me and all this other stuff. And they were like, Hey, if you could be the avatar effectively, if you could be the one, maybe they'll connect with it more. So, you know, you personally, John don't have to do it. But if we could create an AI version of you and you can be the one, then they'll trust you and that type of thing. And I'm like, maybe. Um, but I still think there's going to be that off thing there that I'm not talking to a human and there's something. So I think you're right. I think I look in the next year or so, this stuff's moving so fast that I don't, I might not even know this is you. You know what I mean? Like we might, we honestly might get to that point, you know, no, actually it's almost a guarantee that we'll get to that point within the next five, five years.

Yes, exactly. But right now we're placing our bets on audio because we feel like if I can at least engage you in the audio sounding super realistic, then I'm not distracting you. Like you said, I mean, we tried video and it was like, I could not stop looking at how creepy those faces looked and how the lips weren't moving exactly right or the forehead never moved or something like that. And so the lips move, but nothing else moved on there. It just was too much. And so I was like, let's not even worry about that. Let's focus on audio, making this a great experience for our customer at the end of the day, and then they'll engage and then we'll add on. You can always add on as the technology improves and stuff.

So that's really where I felt like the reason we decided to start moving into this is because the audio got there. And also what we have been trying to do is sort of a mix of scripted and AI. So our product is really different from others in that you're not, we're not just giving you access to a platform and then saying, Hey, you know, salesperson, Joe, whatever is coming up for you, you just type in your little prompt and then it'll let you practice. We actually are doing this very much like a training program. So the manager is now actually sort of deciding, Hey, I need my team to get better on these eight scenarios. And we're doing all of the building ourselves. We hand test every single one of those.

Again, our goal is to make it as realistic as possible. And so we want to make sure even like curve balls are thrown in there, uh, where, you know, or someone that's starting to get more and more upset if you say the wrong thing or more and more calm, you know, those types of things or those nuances we want to make sure are all built in. And now everyone on the team is doing the same role play are very close to it. So it's scripted. And yet if you say something crazy, the AI will respond accordingly. And so it will, but you can't start talking about, I don't know, uh, the, you could talk about the weather probably that would probably be fine, but you can't go completely off topic. It is going to keep you into this role play.

But now you as a manager, instead of listening to all of these calls, because like you said, even if you jump from minute to minute, now we're having AI listened to the call and it is fine, like looking for all these micro behaviors that you know, that this is what it means to be empathetic, what it means to have momentum, what it means to make sure you're landing on like the right next step. It's looking for all of those things for you and then scoring your reps on it. So now you can see sort of across the board, how people are doing, but it's also helping you pinpoint on like, if, you know, again, salesperson Joe is not doing really well in one particular area consistently, now, you know, what to go and coach on.

And now you've got an example about that. Right. So it's trying to help the manager also just like not have to do listening to calls at all, ideally. And if they do want to coach now they can go and coach, but luckily now salesperson Joe is getting that feedback right away. They're not having to wait when their manager has time. They're not waiting for performance reviews or coaching or anything like that. They're getting that feedback. And we're also giving them some scripting. So like if they say something that sounds almost right, but not quite there where it's giving it suggestions also. And like, here's how you would rephrase that. So it's going to land even better. Right. So that's the other piece of this.

And so we're really excited about it because we are also seeing the most usage in sales. But we also see some usage around, like I said, more on this client side where you were trying to get a client to make a decision because they're sort of hemming and hawing and they're not making a decision. How do you get them to make a decision on things when you have maybe not such great results from your campaign and you need to share that, but you don't want to ruin the relationship? You know, things like that also are coming in there. So some sort of customer success and client management, those type of things are also getting used quite a bit. How do people, what are some mistakes people make when implementing an AI role play scenario for the reasons of my managers don't have time and this is a great solution for it?

Because I've seen, I've seen the good and the bad. You know what I mean? I've seen what you had mentioned earlier, where it's just like, cool, we got this role play thing. Everybody make sure you go in there and, you know, get certified or whatever it is, or pick your skill, whether it's closing or next steps or something like that, and make sure you do that. Which again, makes it a little bit more of a check the box scenario here versus real world application. Cause there's some other ones that I really appreciate that do almost like a baseline metric of, okay, this is, let's do some role plays just in general to kind of see where everybody is on these things. Then it'll like, look at your calendar and say, Ooh, John, you got a meeting coming up with Neha.

It's a closing call. You're deficient in these areas. Go watch these role plays to prep for that thing. And then it records it and it kind of has that self, um, you know, just improvement scenario to it. So what, if you're a sales leader right now, thinking about AI as a role play scenario, what do you need to have in place to make this a success before even making a decision on who to, like what to bring in? So we definitely did sort of that, that mistake in the first pilot we did where they just gave people access to the platform and said, you know, go forth and use it basically. Right. And people didn't, obviously people are busy and honestly, people don't really like doing training. It's what it comes down to.

People say they want to improve, but they don't actually want to go through that hard work of doing it. And so we wouldn't see usage very much. Right. And so then the sales leader would be like, why aren't people using it? And I was like, because we're not really like making the time for them to do it. We're not in encouraging it, or we're not even tying any sort of incentives to it or anything like that. So the second time we ran a pilot, we actually completely changed the way we did it, which was, it was for a specific period of time. So we ran it more like a training program. So people only had access to the platform for six weeks. So they knew they had to get in their role play practice before, like, basically they would lose access to the program.

And we also ran it like a competition. So then people would get points for doing the different role plays. And we would every week list out who the winners were. And there was an actual prize at the end. So people got a day off and they got a little bit of money. So by really creating this like a program and there being a lot more energy behind it from the leadership, rather than we've given you yet another tool, hopefully you use it. But they were like, no, this is really important to us that you guys get better at it. We're going to put a lot more energy and focus around it. So we did a kickoff call. We had people walk through the product together so they understood how it worked. We got a testimonial from someone who did use it first, who then shared it with everybody else on the team about how easy it actually was and like not as hard as you think or not as weird as you think to talk to AI.

And then we really started seeing it snowball and people really using it quite a bit. I mean, we had people doing, you know, 30, 40, 50 role plays at that point. So the competition definitely really helped. I would say that's the way I that's why I think of this as truly training and not as just access to a platform because we all have access to so many tools, honestly, too many sometimes. And so then you just don't use them. But if you really want people to improve, they have to kind of do deliberate practice and kind of focus on it for a short period of time. Well, I think that's the challenge across the board with almost anything, right? It kind of goes back to the management. What's funny is, you know, you're giving managers a tool that's going to offload some of the responsibility for them.

But yet they still don't make time to do the thing to make sure that it's consistent. It's just, I mean, just like my training, you know what I mean? Like anytime somebody ever asked me, John, what's the reinforcement plan? What's your reinforcement package? I'm like, where are your managers going to be? Yeah. Like, excuse me? I'm like, are your managers going to go through the prep with me? Are they going to go through the training on demand so that they can see it before they actually roll it out to their team? Are they going to sit in my coaching calls afterwards to understand how to coach this internally? Or are they going to sit in the back of the room, you know, with their camera off, checking their emails and their iPhone?

I go, it is what it is. You don't want to pay me to be your reinforcement. It'll be way too expensive. Yeah. By the way, you're paying me to do your manager's job. So why do you have managers if that's the case? Yeah. And it's just, that's where I think a lot of managers, unfortunately, it kind of comes back to this argument or discussion I've had with RevOps these days and how RevOps keeps coming and saying, oh, we're going to give all, you know, do sales reps only spend 27% of their time selling and the other 73%, blah, blah, blah. Right. I'm like, you do realize that the majority of sales reps want to do that administrative stuff because it makes them feel like they're doing something. You give them all that time back and they're not going to know what to do with it or they're not skilled enough to, they don't have the skills or you haven't trained them enough to actually use all that great intel that you're going to give them to articulate that to a client.

And I think it's the same thing with managers. Yeah. Is there a reframe that we have to do with managers to get them to, you know, leverage the tools the right way so that they can have the time to focus on what they need to focus on? And also you said, hopefully they don't even need to do coaching calls. So in, in your world, what does a manager do? Like what, how should we reframe this to say, look, the technology is there at this point to be able to do these things. Yeah. So what is a manager's role right now? If it like, let's say your stuff works great, right? And everybody's doing role plays and it's, it's helping out. Where's, where's that leave a manager? Yeah. That's a really good question.

I mean, my thesis has been that managers have too many things on their plate and are not getting to all of those things because they have to do all of these coaching calls. So our thought was, Hey, all of those sort of like bigger picture, being able to be more creative, think of sort of like future. What else can we do moving down the line? Like that never happens. That sort of white space to actually think never happens because you're so busy just checking the next Slack message, email message, et cetera. Coaching doesn't even happen. So let's at least get the coaching to happen so that it's truly not just being left, you know, to the side of the road. And then the managers hopefully can actually then start thinking about how else do we get this team to even improve even more, right?

Like what are the more creative things that we could be doing? Is there new packaging? Is there new pricing? Is there new stuff that we can be saying? Can we get that feedback back to, you know, the product team, et cetera? Like are there things that they're not doing right now that we need them to be doing, but that they're like just so stuck in just basically all of these administrative tasks, but they're not even doing the things that we actually want them to do. Right. So like, I don't want to hire a manager to just do administrative stuff. No. I clearly want them because like, Hey, you've done something well. Can I get you to think more strategically? And can I have you share that strategy back?

And then like, you know, if you see something not working on the team, can you come up with a solution for it? Right. And like, what else could we do or what other support do you need? So them being less passive and hopefully more active and bringing those things up. That's what I would hope a manager would be doing, you know? Yeah. I think I got a different take on this one because I don't think most managers have the ability to do that. Think that way in any way, shape or form. Most of them, especially the frontline ones aren't mature enough. Quite frankly, they haven't had the experience. They need it and they need to get exposed to it. But I actually think it's something that I said a while ago before AI, you know, I got myself in trouble because I was like, could we stop asking managers to be coaches?

They're not. They're not coaches. They don't know how to. We don't give them the tools and we don't give them the time. So let's literally take that off of their plate and let them do what they can do, which is why they were promoted in the first place. They were the best fucking rep on the team that knew how to close deals, knew how to be strategic about accounts, knew how to get in and get shit done. Yeah. Let them be that person. Let them be the deal coach. Let them be the deal strategist. Let them be the deal so that the less, you know, A player reps, you know, the Bs and the Cs can see what it's like to run a real deal the right way and close it at the high and multi-threat and all those things.

So I actually want to go the opposite. There's always going to be the few that bubble up to the top that are the more strategic ones that are the ones that are true leadership in them. But I'm going to use Pareto's principle here and say that I think 80% of them just want to be reps. They want to be the super rep. Let them be the super rep. Yeah. That way we can continue to promote the way we promote because I'd rather not do that. Like the way that we promote now is we promote the best. I actually don't think we should ever promote the best. I think the best should always just stay being the best because they're usually the best for that reason. And then you put them into management and now all of a sudden they're doing paperwork.

They're doing shit they don't like. They're getting paid less money. You know what I mean? All that stuff just for a title. Yeah. Right? That's very true. So I don't know. I think this is an opportunity here to just, you know, emperor's clothes, right? It's like, let's just call it what it is. Managers aren't coaches. Let AI do the coaching. That's true. Managers aren't coaches. And we're expecting managers to be coaches. But they don't know how to be coaches, right? So that's the problem we've, and we've been saying it for years. Oh, coach your team, coach your team. Okay. How do I do that? I don't know. Just coach. Yeah. That's what I would hear. I mean, I talked to all sorts of big organizations, small organizations when I, and they would be like, oh yeah, we're just expecting the managers to kind of figure this out and do the coaching.

And I'm like, but what are we teaching to the managers and how do they get practice in coaching? And now they're having to sort of like look at all these data points, right? Of all these different calls and figure out what is the one or two things I should coach this person on. That's really, that's what I was like, even if we can make that part easier where we're like, okay, fine, you are going to do some coaching still, but like, let's us look through all of the data points and find the area that this person really needs the support on, you know, rather than your subjective idea of what you think. Well, I think that that's the other piece that I really, you know, have a lot of hope for AI is that it can, it can pinpoint my problem versus your problem.

That's right. Right. Right. It's like, John, you have a, you know, out of all the calls that I've analyzed using AI, it's like, dude, you don't get next steps. Like you, we got, I got to teach, like, I'm going to listen in on your next call. I'm going to sit next to you. And so like, this is going to be part of the agenda or like, John, you just, you can't get to, you, you haven't been able to multi, you haven't been able to get the power to save your life, man, for the past, you know, three months, every single call you have not gotten to power. Let's talk about that. Let's, let's, let's talk through why that. Right. And there's, there's a moment that I can coach. Yeah. Right. But if you're like, Oh, when a rep shows up in front of you and you have no idea why they're struggling, then to your point, it's subjective.

It's my opinion. Well, try this. And what I've always said that the challenge with that is, this is why I almost put it on reps that you have to manage up. Like you have to be a scientist as a rep to understand your own deficiency. So you can actually bring that to your manager and say, boss, this is where I need help. I've been analyzing my entire process and you know, I do a really good job here, here and here, but this is where I'm falling down. Could you help me there? If you do that as a rep, you're the manager's best friend. Yeah. But if you don't, you're, you're now at the mercy of the opinion of your manager. That's right. Because now if you, if I'm coaching you, I'll be like, and I, and you're struggling and I don't know why I'll go, well, go try this.

Because when I was a rep, it worked. This is what worked. Because you're not, because you're not me. Exactly. Because you're not me, it's not going to work. That's right. They just give advice based off of what worked for them, but everyone's different and what worked for you might not work for the next person. So that's all they have because they only know what they know, right? And so that's why I feel like where AI can come in handy is looking at these data points and maybe giving that sales rep being like, Hey, you're consistently not doing this. Now maybe go find some more support on this. Now they could take that to their manager and say, I'm getting this consistently. I don't know what to do about it.

I'm trying, I'm trying different things and I'm still getting sort of a low score on whatever it may be. The other thing we're trying to do is also share amongst peers on like who is doing well in specific scenarios so that maybe if the manager, again, doesn't have the time to do coaching, you could go to a peer and be like, Hey, I see you're doing really well on this. What are you saying when this comes up? Because I don't, I can't seem to like figure out what to say to get them to do this next step. And what are you doing? So like, how do we get people to even peer coach a little bit more? Right. Because you never know, like they might, someone else might be actually be a better coach than the manager themselves.

Well, and theoretically, this is where I'm going to give Gonk some credit. You know, when done right, I love the clips of Gonk calls of like, here's how to handle that object. Here's the best way of handling that objection. Here's the best rep and how they did an intro and how they built rapport. And if you marry that up to John, here's your deficiencies. Here's some examples of the best reps and how they address those. And now I can learn from the best reps in that scenario. Now I think you got the best of all worlds here. So, you know, it is because you're, to your point, like that's where I think we miss a lot now, especially in this virtual world is, you know, when I was growing up in sales, you know, I was in the bullpen.

And so I, I didn't get good training. I didn't get good coaching, but man, I, I listened and, and, and I, I picked up through osmosis. You know what I mean? I'd be like, Ooh, oh man, I love the way that, you know, he just intro that. Ooh, I love the way that she just said that, like, you know what I mean? And I just kind of was around in the bullpen of the energy of sales. And you just, you know, the, the VP would stop over and talk about a deal and I'd peer my head over and listen in. And, and I think we've, I feel so bad that I feel like COVID broke us in so many ways and it forced this virtual transactional, like non osmosis, non like, and, and we've ripped that away. And so hopefully I can help solve a little bit of that, but man, there's nothing that solves the, just being around people who are talking business talking.

So to your point, like even in your early careers, right? Like you've got into these jobs and you were like, Whoa, like, I don't know how to speak this language. Yeah. Right. Exactly. But being around it, you pick up on it. You pick up on it. Exactly. And so definitely the teams that are more remote are really liking the AI role play because otherwise if you're in the office, maybe you can squeeze in a few minutes here or there, or like you said, you're just listening and picking it up that way. But if you're a remote or hybrid and not in the office very much, you're not picking it up at all. And how do you then train people who are not even in the office with you really? Right. So definitely COVID has really changed things.

And that's why I think AI can at least play some role there and hopefully like bridging some of that gap. Obviously it's not the same, but you know. No, but it's, it's, it's better. I think it's better than role play by a human. I'll just say I've, and I'll be straight. I, I never do role playing my trainings. Never do it. I know how valuable it can be, but the problem is, is it's almost in my experience and maybe it's just, I've had too many bad experiences with role play and other idiot sales trainers who, you know, are going through the process because it's either the perfect scenario, which would never happen in real life, or the most ridiculous scenario that would never happen. And nine times out of 10, it's the trainer showing off because they've done it a million times before.

That's right. And, and it looks like, oh my, like Guru Ganesh. Like, I don't know. Do you know Guru Ganesh? I don't, but yeah. Oh my God. You have to look up this guy. So Guru Ganesh, he was the number one Sandler trainer of all time. Oh, really? Oh, wow. You know Sandler, right? And it's a franchise model. All other Sandler trainers, Guru Ganesh up here. Like not even close second. Like he had Salesforce as his own. He was the only one that could actually alter Sandler's content. Sandler's, he's the only one that they allowed to even alter their content in any way, shape or form. Him and I were at Salesforce. So he did the Sandler, he did the Sandler, you know, upfront contract and I did the prospecting to get him there.

Okay. But man, he would do these role plays and it was magic. And he called it edutainment because, you know, you've got to keep people engaged and stuff like that. But the thing that I loved about it, he would, he would give everybody the bullshit. Like he'd say at any point in this presentation, you can raise your hand and call bullshit on me. Right. And inevitably the first 10 minutes, you know, some AE would raise their hand and be like, bullshit. Right. Be like, come on up here. Yeah. And they would do this role play. And within like 30 seconds, he would have this AE just wrapped around his finger about like, okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And I looked at that as, as impressive. Yeah. But I'm also like, dude, Guru.

But you know, yeah. You've been doing this for 30 years, man. Like, you know exactly how to pin that kid down in that scenario to get them to agree to this. And as much as I appreciated it, I'm like, nobody, that's not real world. That's not real life. Like I just. Plus watching someone do it and actually being able to do it yourself. It's like, we just all finished watching the world cup. It'd be like us explaining how to make a goal and then expecting the soccer player to actually make the goal. We're like, no, you don't have to go practice that and do it. Not only make it, not even make the goal, but make the goal in front of a hundred thousand people, right? Yes, exactly. I mean, that's why I was like, how do we expect athletes, musicians, all these people to be so good at this?

And then we're like amazed at how good they are. And I'm like, do you know how many hours of practice they did before you saw this magical moment? And that's what I feel like is missing communication skills. It's like, we have not done any of that practice. None of that. And it takes hours. It takes a lot of learning and people just expect, oh, I'll just magically somehow be a good salesperson or somehow be able to handle a tough situation. And most of us don't like negotiation and confrontation, like naturally. So we have to learn to get good at it, you know? Yeah. Is there a psychology behind why people freeze when it comes to those type of things, like hard negotiations or when curve balls come up?

Is there like a fight or flight scenario there? For sure. Yeah, absolutely. That's why people will do either they'll start getting defensive. That's the fighting part. Or they start freezing, really, is what usually you can't just like leave. Most of the time you're sort of stuck in that conversation. So you're there, even though you would like it to end. But that's why you have to go through it so many times so that you can kind of tell your mind like, hey, I can handle this. This is not a threat anymore to me. I know exactly what to say. I feel confident. And that's really where we're seeing sort of the most impact is people just feeling a lot less anxious going into these tough situations so that when it happens, they're like, I can handle it.

I know how to handle it. I've had a lot thrown at me. And you only get that from experience. But the problem is, is like, you know, it takes a long time to get that experience. So we're just trying to make that happen a little faster. Expedite a little bit. Make it also make it a little bit more comfortable, like in the sense of I got I feel a lot better in my own little room here, like playing around and making mistakes that I do in front of a group of my peers. And that was the other problem I always had with, with AI, with, with not AI role play, with regular role play is nine times out of 10, the person doing it was far more concerned with their perception and what the crowd was thinking of them than they were of mastering whatever that technique was.

You know what I mean? And you don't want to like, yeah, mess up in front of, you know, your coworkers. That sucks. So yeah, you're on, you're on a stage. That's what's going on really. Right. So yeah, exactly. Awesome. Well, what's exciting you next? Like, where do you think this is going? Do you think we're full automated, like, you know, coaching on every call? Like, how's that? Where do you think this, uh, this, this specific part of AI is going? Yeah, it's a great question. Um, some of the things that people have asked me are, you know, is it that you get coaching while you're in the call? So that's definitely one area that we've been exploring. What we have found is that people get too distracted by the coaching that's happening.

And so really you want to do it before and after, but not during. So I know there's a lot of products out there that are like, oh, we'll just have this person whispering in your ear. And I'm like, do you know how annoying that is to have to like think about that and what the customer is saying? So, uh, so that's an area that we have explored and people have been really like, like, this is not working for me. It's too much. It's mental overload right now. Um, I definitely think like the video stuff is really going to like eventually take off where it won't feel so creepy and it feels like you can really get into it that way. Um, I also think though, that maybe we're going to just be able to make this even in more and more personalized.

Like right now we are using sort of like a rubric that is standard so that people are being, you know, graded on the exact same things, but we're going to be able to, kind of like you were saying, like be able to really notice, oh, this person really, this is the one area that they could really use some focus on. It could automatically generate maybe the right role play for them to just focus on that one thing over and over again. Right. So that they're like just doing just the next step close over and over again, for example, uh, or that same objection. And you're not having to go through a whole call or something like that. So I feel like it's just going to become a more and more personalized that way.

So you're getting exactly the training that you need rather than having to go through all these role plays that maybe you're already pretty good at or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I hope it gets to the point where with all these call recording things that it's just, you know, it inherently knows what I need. I, like I use Otter for my call recording and I actually, one of the things I did recently, cause I've, I've lost a couple of deals recently that I was shocked at losing. Like, you know, I had done all the right stuff. I had the executive engagement, I had impact problem, all that fun stuff. And all of a sudden, sorry, John, we gotta, you know, wait until Q4. Sorry, John, we gotta, it's like, whoa, whoa.

And I like, I'm a three strikes and you're out guy. Like when something happens once it is whatever it is, what it is. What happens twice, I'm going to start paying attention. Start three times. I got to do something about it. And so I had Otter and I had, cause Claude is connected, I was like, could you go analyze all of my sales calls for the past three months and pull out what's going on? Where am I missing? And it was like, oh, okay. You know, and it gave me really good insights and, and, and, but I had to proactively tell it which, you know, I think we're going to get to a point where it's like in my daily brief this morning, John, here's a couple of things you need, you know, a couple of quick tweaks based on what I've been listening to for the past month here.

Right. So make sure you watch this quick little video on this to make sure you remember to get the next step or whatever. So it's going to be a lot more prescriptive. I think instead of reactive. Yeah. Right. Where it's like, instead of me asking, you know, how can I get better and what do I need to get better at? It's just going to know. And it's going to, yeah, my only flip on that is that it's not going to show you a video. It's going to give you a role play to just practice that. Yeah, exactly. Like you're going to pick up on it and learn it a little faster. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Neha, thank you so much. Tell people where they can find out more information about what you're working on, where you're at and all the fun stuff.

Yeah. I mean, our website is joinbreakthrough.ai. So you can definitely come on there, see how it works. I have a fun little demo on price objections on like what sounds like a good answer versus what actually is a good answer. I saw that actually. I saw you on that. That was interesting because at the first I was like, actually, that's okay. That's a pretty decent answer. But then your second one, I was like, oh yeah, no, that's much better. Yeah, that's much better. Yeah, exactly. So just want to show that like, you know, you think you know what a good answer is, but really this is what we're trying to get you to. So, you know, they can definitely come and watch that or reach out to me through there.

Perfect. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Yeah, sounds great. Thank you so much. This was so fun. Yeah, of course. And everybody, I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I said at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much and I will see you on the other side. Hey, thanks again for listening to the show and for all your support throughout the years. This is one last reminder to check out my training programs at jbarrows.com or leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform or G2 if you've already gone through my training or sign up for my newsletter.

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