6 of the best AI sales coaching platforms for the future

The secret lies in coaching's ability to tap into internal motivation, fuelling individuals to take action.

Yet, coaching can be resource-intensive and expensive. So, what's the solution?

Hop on the bandwagon and use AI technology to save time and money. Empower your sales managers to design personalized coaching programs around strategic company goals and known best practices. Now’s the time to supercharge your team's performance efficiently and effectively.

What is AI sales coaching?

AI sales coaching is your data-driven sales ally, delivering real-time support, and unbiased feedback. It's the stepping stone for achieving sales goals without guesswork.

Coaching is where you want to invest. It leads to a 28% increase in win rates and a 7% boost in annual revenue growth.² Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, AI-assisted digital coaching caters to individual requirements based on employee strengths, weaknesses, and goals.

Consider Fingerprint For Success (F4S), we use our XFactor Model to assess individual performance and guide sales employees toward achieving high-performance status.

With statistical analysis and comparative evaluation, we distinguish between low, medium, and high performers and use performance coaching to empower individuals to unlock their full potential.

With effective AI coaching, your sales reps can focus on key motivational factors that have the greatest impact on their performance. You also equip them with tools to build the essential skills they need for personal and career advancement.

Another great benefit of AI sales coaching is that it evolves and advances over time as people learn and improve, maximizing impact and team success. Companies use different coaching tactics to maximize potential.

Understanding AI sales coaching tools

Some businesses use coaching to dissect real-time sales conversations, providing valuable feedback for performance enhancement. Others opt for a bespoke touch, tailoring coaching to meet individual and entire team's needs.

Then there are organizations that create coaching strategy tools to establish a more structured and effective coaching framework. Each approach brings unique advantages and applications to the table.

Live and on-demand call coaching tools

Live and on-demand call coaching allow managers and AI tools to provide real-time feedback and guidance to sales reps during or post-calls. Think of it as co-selling where reps watch experienced professionals in action and learn from them. Sales managers listen in, identify what went wrong, and then help sales reps improve their skills with data-driven insights.

They use AI as a digital assistant to provide quick information and generate comprehensive call transcriptions, where important moments are identified, using predefined metrics. You can review these later to discuss critical junctures in the conversation and assess what positively or negatively impacted the sales call.

Conversational AI coaching software

Conversational AI coaching uses AI technology to analyze the sales process, and offer feedback, suggestions, and prompts to the sales reps based on predefined criteria and coaching algorithms. Here you don’t need to listen in, AI analyzes the conversation for you and hones in on areas of improvement.

Gain insights by analyzing various aspects such as tone, keywords, objections, and customer reactions.

Coaching strategy tools

These are tools that use real-time data and insights from sales calls and video meetings to build a coaching strategy. They provide activity and performance data for teams and individual reps (for comparison) and enable you to create coaching plans and demo lessons, manage assignments, and deliver valuable feedback.

Use these tools to define coaching activities and gain AI-driven insights to assess the skills, coaching progress, assigned tasks, and competency scores of sales reps.

Why is sales coaching important?

Sales coaching empowers individual reps, as well as teams, to strengthen the skills required for effective sales performance while ensuring they don’t feel stagnant in their work. It is a tailored approach that bridges the gap between sales training and actual sales performance.

Coaching is an effective strategy for boosting motivation, driving revenue, and maintaining consistency in sales strategies. Research shows that companies that provide effective sales coaching experience a 16.7% increase in revenue.³ That’s because it boosts employee retention and loyalty.

So how do you decide which coaching platform suits you best? Don’t worry, we got you! We dug in the trenches and unearthed the 6 best sales coaching software options, to enable you to make an informed decision.

What are the best AI sales coaching platforms in 2023?

1. Einstein Conversation Insights by Salesforce

Einstein Conversation Insights is an AI sales coaching platform by Salesforce. It uses Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand what’s going on in customer calls. The tool enables busy sales managers to identify insights and trends hidden within conversational data and suggests sales activities and content accordingly.

Why we like it: A great option for busy sales managers as it provides quick access to relevant information and resources that facilitate the coaching process.

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Features:

Insights into customer signals:

• Gain important insights into sales calls with call transcript snippets and call trend summaries.
• Identify critical moments, opportunities, and trends during sales calls, such as competitor mentions, pricing discussions, questions or topics your company wishes to track.

Automate administrative tasks for reps:

• Transcribe calls and highlight key mentions with automatic transcripts.
• Proactively delegate next steps or action required using action items detail.
• Use follow-up notifications to alert reps of any outstanding items.

Scale onboarding and coaching:

• Create a playlist of best practices with call collections.
• Provide daily coaching recommendations using call insights email.
• Share valuable feedback using coaching comments.

Benefits

Gain insight into critical moments during sales calls. Adapt to market changes, identify product pairing opportunities, and coachable moments and take data-driven actions. Highlight exemplary calls for reps to learn from.

Pricing

Available with some Sales Cloud editions. For others, it's simple to incorporate as an add-on.

2. Fingerprint For Success (F4S)

Fingerprint For Success (F4S) is a performance and collaboration coaching platform that supports individuals, sales leaders, and teams to identify motivational strengths and blind spots to accelerate development.

Why we like it: The platform identifies and measures 48 motivational traits, which can be harnessed to maximize coaching potential, making it a powerful AI sales coaching platform.

Start by taking the F4S work style assessment (for free). This assessment invites each team member to answer a series of questions that measure 48 distinct work traits. The detailed report provides guidance on how to communicate and work with employees to build happier, more productive teams.

We have worked with successful sales teams around the globe and have aggregated our data into the 16 motivational groups most relevant to sales. Discover where your team currently stands in relation to these traits and a stack of others, then use F4S team coaching tools to reach your optimal position.

F4S team dashboard

Features:

F4S comes with a stack of features that enable sales professionals to narrow in on employees and the entire sales team’s core skills required for sales improvement. Key features can be divided into 3 categories:

People analytics:

• Use human cognitive and behavioral data for insights.
• Identify areas of friction and predict team dynamics.
• Assess team culture, affinities, and the power of differences.
• Overcome unconscious bias with data-driven insights.

Benchmarking:

• Compare your organization against industry top performers.
• Benchmark work motivations against proven success factor models.
• Pinpoint growth opportunities for leaders, teams, and companies.
• Gain a clear understanding of your company's standing in comparison to industry standards.
• Benchmark motivations across different cultures and entrepreneurial profiles.

Human and AI coaching:

• Access to more than 1000 coaching programs for personal and team development.
• Use AI and human coaches to deepen self-awareness and challenge comfort zones.
• Support experimentation, failure, and recalibration for personal and organizational well-being.
• Radically improve personal and team efficiency.

F4S coaching programs

Benefits

Gain insights into aggregated data on successful sales teams by analyzing best practices from entrepreneurs and business leaders from around the world. Build top talent in your organization by coaching for more than 1000 goals and assessing 48 core motivations. Customize plans and resources according to your employee and team needs.

Pricing

F4S pricing for sales teams includes a free Starter Plan with Team Plans starting at $11.99 USD per month and a Custom Plan you can modify according to enterprise needs.

3. Gong

Gong is a sales coaching software that uses Revenue Intelligence Platform, a proprietary AI technology for offering teams a single platform to capture, comprehend, and respond to every customer interaction. Its artificial intelligence proficiency also extends to coaching, where it automatically generates concise summaries of important details discussed in sales calls.

Why we like it: Gong creates a transparent system to hold managers accountable for providing quantitative coaching to all team members.

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Features:

Gong's features are categorized into 3 core aspects.

1. Data-driven personalized coaching

• Use machine learning for data-driven coaching.
• Offer personalized coaching recommendations based on performance data.
• Gain insights into individual strengths and areas for improvement.
• Enable customized coaching plans for each sales rep.

2. Feedback management

• Easy access to coaching materials and resources.
• Facilitate ongoing feedback loops between managers and reps.

3. Call analytics and conversation analysis

• Analyze call transcripts and recordings for valuable insights.
• Understand customer sentiment and objection handling.
• Generate real-time call insights and performance metrics.
• Get context-aware guidance for sales reps.
• Identify successful sales techniques and customer preferences.

Benefits:

Gong’s powerful analytical abilities give you a clear picture of what works to close deals and what doesn’t. Track important metrics such as topic duration, talk ratio, and question rate, and use scorecards to leave targeted feedback without having to sit in on calls.

Pricing:

Not publicly available.

4. Mindtickle

Mindtickle’s AI sales coaching platform helps leaders grow revenue by increasing their understanding of ideal sales behaviors. It’s an effective platform to build and implement proactive sales strategies by identifying winning behaviors that correlate to positive business outcomes.

Why we like it: Mindtickle analyzes real-world buyer interactions to identify skills gaps so managers can coach salespeople to improve their sales skills.

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Features

Mindtickle's functionalities can be categorized into 3 areas.

1. Sales enablement and content

• Align content and revenue by integrating your team's content.
• Enable collaborative content creation and sharing among team members.
• Track content usage at various stages of the sales funnel to optimize content strategies.

2. Revenue intelligence

• Get insights from sales meetings and interactions.
• Analyze topics discussed during sales interactions.
• Score sales calls to identify successful tactics and areas for improvement.

3. Sales coaching

• Transform readiness insights into real-time performance improvements.
• Get tools for addressing specific deal-related challenges.
• Offer AI-powered personalized evaluation of sales reps.
• Adjust coaching programs based on insights.

Benefits

Mindtickle allows for detailed sales interaction analysis so you can identify key moments and build efficient sales tactics. Its hybrid approach to sales coaching improves performance through in-person, virtual, peer-to-peer, 1-on-1 and self-coaching.

Pricing

Not publicly available.

5. Chorus AI by ZoomInfo

Chorus by ZoomInfo is an AI-powered Conversation Intelligence sales training platform that captures and analyzes all your customer engagements across phone calls, video meetings, and email. It leverages AI and machine learning technologies to transcribe, analyze and unlock critical insights from every customer interaction.

Why we like it: Conversation tracking and insights allow managers to improve coaching effectiveness without dominating the conversation.  

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Features:

Sales training and knowledge base

• Get a knowledge base with extensive coaching materials.
• Create playbooks for sales strategies.
• The platform allows for video recording of coaching sessions.

Feedback and performance review

• Easy feedback collection and analysis
• Review and evaluate coaching sessions with scorecards.
• Coaching card feature tracks progress and areas for improvement.

Notifications and analytics

• Real-time notifications for coaching and performance updates.
• In-depth call analytics for coaching insights.
• Machine learning for call analysis and identifying coaching opportunities.

Benefits

Chorus by ZoomInfo is a comprehensive platform that enhances visibility, fosters process and behavior improvements, and ultimately contributes to a significant impact on the bottom line.

Pricing

Not publicly available.

6. SalesLoft

SalesLoft serves as a hub for sellers to manage their digital selling activities, connect with buyers, gain clarity on next steps and access coaching and valuable insights for achieving success.

Why we like it: Workflow management allows teams to keep track of and manage activities efficiently. It also facilitates the development of a personalized sales cadence.

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Features

SalesLoft features can be divided into 2 categories:

1. Deep customer listening

• AI-generated insights to understand customer trends.
• Comprehensive workflows for increasing customer lifetime value.

2. Rep coaching

• Track performance with call recording, transcripts, and analysis
• Tailor insights for better guidance on seller development.
• Automate forecasts with deep insights on trends.

Benefits

SalesLoft is an easy, scalable and intuitive sales coaching software. Its deep customer listening feature allows you to maintain deal velocity by providing constant access to all buyer conversations throughout the revenue cycle.

Pricing

Not publicly available.

7. Dialpad

Dialpad is an AI-powered business communications platform and sales training software. It streamlines communication across devices and enhances understanding of customer experiences by transforming conversations into actionable insights.

Why we like it: The real-time assist keeps your customer facing sales teams one step ahead and sources information quickly.

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Features

Conversation insights and learning

• Gain insights on performance with call transcription and analysis.
• Searchable keyword functionality to track trends and identify key sales moments.

Live coaching throughout the sales cycle

• Easy live coaching with AI-assisted tools.
• Better insights using live call sentiment analysis.
• Create coaching playlists for training and onboarding.
• Voicemail drop option for high-volume sales teams.

Benefits

Dialpad is a multi-faceted tool that empowers you to learn from conversations, offer real-time coaching, automate tasks and enhance productivity throughout the sales cycle. It is ideal for high-volume sales teams.

Pricing

Standard and Pro Packages are available at $15 USD and $25 USD per user per month (when billed annually). They also have custom packages for enterprise-level needs.

How to improve your sales performance coaching

Unlike training, coaching is a leadership approach that revolves around employee strengths, skills, and ambition. AI coaching tools, combined with team leaders assuming coaching roles, greatly influence employee job satisfaction, career advancement, and retention rates.

Up to 60% of sales reps are likely to leave their job if their manager is a poor coach. So pay attention to the small stuff, like listening and showing empathy, it can make or break your coaching efforts.

Your main purpose as a coach is to focus on an employee’s well-being, performance, and career progression. Here we’ve provided some tips to improve your skills as a coach and leader.

Lead with empathy

Put yourself in the ‘employee’s shoes.’ Learn what motivates and drives them forward. Be realistic and don’t expect them to know things you didn’t at their level. The most important thing for effective coaching is to build a safe environment through trust and openness and to connect on a human level. Let employees open up about what’s holding them back.

Listen, understand, and guide

Avoid being judgemental or jumping directly into feedback during your sessions. Listen first, mediate the sessions, don't run them. Ask open-ended questions to understand their challenges, problems, and the ‘whys’ behind them, then respond accordingly.

Set goals together

Work together to set realistic individual and team goals that facilitate career progression and align them with company objectives. Structure your sales coaching program using a GROW model (Goal, Reality, Options, and Way forward). The GROW Model introduced by Sir John Whitmore, is a four-step framework for goal setting and attainment. It is widely used for its adaptability and effective focus on the individual being coached.

Provide feedback and recognition

Use data-driven metrics to analyze performance, recognize improvement, and provide appreciation and feedback accordingly. Revisit established goals to pinpoint areas where improvement is more pronounced and the reasons behind it. Identify areas requiring further enhancement and consider whether additional goals should be incorporated.

Create an actionable plan

Ask your sales reps which skills they would like to develop and work together to surface methods for all goals. Write out a plan of action that outlines steps and determines a timeline for each goal.

Managers can harness their inner sales coaches with F4S tools to gain the best from their employees. With our revolutionary assessment backed by 20+ years of research, measure 48 different motivations and performance coach every individual to their full potential.

Individualize your approach

Every employee possesses distinct strengths and skills. As a coach, your role involves recognizing these individual strengths and identifying areas where skill development is needed. The F4S assessment, which takes 15-30 minutes to complete, provides a wealth of information on employee motivations and enables you to provide personalized feedback about areas of improvement.

Review sales calls

Record and review sales calls to pinpoint problem areas and track performance. Review both ‘good parts’ of the call and areas for improvement. Share successful calls to give a clear idea of best practices in action and negative examples so reps know which pitfalls to avoid.

Encourage self-evaluation

Encourage employees to self-evaluate. Empower employees to assess their current performance, identify areas of improvement, set practical goals, and commit to an action plan. Emphasize one improvement at a time so they don’t become overwhelmed during the process.

The beauty of employing F4S AI coaching is that it allows employees to check and track performance. The platform coaches to more than 1,000 different goals, ranging from maintaining physical and mental well-being to problem-solving and even nurturing leadership skills.

How to measure sales coaching effectiveness

Measuring coaching effectiveness can be tricky but AI coaching platforms come with a bunch of tools that make it easier for you and your sales team to set KPIs and measure coaching effectiveness. Let’s break the process down.

1. Begin by establishing clear coaching objectives. What specific outcomes are you aiming for? Be as specific as possible.
2. Determine measurable metrics and KPIs that align with your coaching objectives. This makes it easier to keep track of your coaching efforts and improve simultaneously.
3. Collect and analyze data for tracking activities and outcomes and use them to set benchmarks to measure your improvement.
4. Collect feedback from sales reps and managers using reports, analytics, insights, scoring systems, and feedback systems to evaluate the qualitative and quantitative impact of coaching.
5. Compare post-coaching performance data against set benchmarks to measure coaching quality and effectiveness.
6. Conduct qualitative assessments through surveys, interviews, or direct observation to understand the softer skills and behavioral changes among sales reps and teams.
7. Refine and adapt to address any lingering challenges or evolving objectives.

Measuring the effectiveness of sales coaching is crucial for fine-tuning your strategies and ensuring a positive impact on your reps’ and team's performance.

Measure your team members' performance over time with F4S

F4S reveals improvements over time. See exactly what skills you've enhanced (for every motivation you’re targeting) and pinpoint areas where improvements remain elusive. The platform guides you in exploring what energizes your team, enhances productivity, and brings each individual fulfillment.

We measure 48 of your personal motivations. The score of each motivation is represented by a circle. These motivational traits are derived from your team’s interests, attitudes, and preferences and provide detailed insights into likes, and dislikes at work, and the factors that enhance team efficiency and progress.