THE BLIND SPOT
Your prospect didn’t sign up to train your salespeople. AI shouldn’t just save time: it should build skills.
Sales Performance & AI — Edition #01
Your prospect didn’t sign up to train your salespeople.
Imagine the scene.
A salesperson is in a meeting. They’ve prepared their slides, know their products, and have mastered their pitch.
Everything is going pretty well.
Then the prospect says:
“Your competitor is 20% cheaper. Why should I pay more with you?”
A brief silence.
The salesperson hesitates, tries to justify the price, talks about the strengths of their company… then ends up offering a discount.
In less than two minutes, they may have destroyed a large part of the value they spent weeks building.
This isn’t a CRM problem.
It isn’t a lead-generation problem.
And it certainly isn’t a PowerPoint problem.
It’s a problem of sales preparation and execution.
We’ve automated almost the entire sales process. Except the most important part.
Look at where companies are investing today:
- Increasingly sophisticated CRMs.
- AI tools for prospecting and personalizing emails.
- Solutions for recording and analyzing meetings.
- Dashboards to track every stage of the pipeline.
All of this is useful.
But I have a question:
How much time do your salespeople actually spend practicing before meeting their customers?
Not training.
Not watching a video.
Not reading a playbook.
PRACTICING.
Responding to a difficult customer. Defending a price. Asking the right questions. Handling an unexpected objection. Securing genuine commitment.
The answer is often: not enough.
And yet, this is precisely the moment when a large part of sales performance is determined.
AI shouldn’t just save time. It should build skills.
That’s where I see a real revolution.
Imagine that before a strategic meeting, your salesperson could:
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Face a demanding virtual customer who knows their market inside out and challenges their arguments.
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Replay the conversation several times, testing different approaches without risking a real deal.
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Receive personalized feedback explaining exactly what they did well and what they need to improve.
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Meet their real customer with better instincts, because they’ve already experienced the situation.
And now imagine that their manager could identify areas for development and focus coaching on the skills that truly make a difference.
We’re no longer talking simply about training.
We’re talking about performance preparation.
The test I propose to sales directors
Take five salespeople from your team.
Give them exactly the same scenario:
“Your prospect tells you that your competitor is offering an equivalent solution, but 20% cheaper. They ask you to match the price.”
Observe their responses.
How many really defend the value?
How many try to understand the decision criteria?
How many negotiate without immediately giving in on price?
You may discover some significant differences, even among experienced salespeople.
The good news is that these skills can be developed.
And thanks to conversational AI, they can now be practiced regularly, at scale, and using scenarios specific to each company.
What if we stopped confusing activity with performance?
A salesperson can send 100 more emails with the help of AI.
But if they can’t lead a customer discovery conversation, defend their value, or close a negotiation, what have we really gained?
The next major advance in Sales Enablement may not be helping salespeople do more.
It will be helping them do better.
That’s the conviction that led us to create Skeells, and that we’re now putting into practice with companies such as Schneider Electric, Linkt, and Viveris.
Now, let’s put it into practice.
Do you lead a sales team?
Here’s a very simple exercise: choose a difficult sales situation your teams encounter.
In 20 minutes, I’ll show you how AI can turn it into immersive, personalized practice.
No grand theoretical speech. A demonstration based on your own business scenario.
Or discover our approach at skeells.ai.
See you soon,
Karim Othmani, Co-founder & CEO of Skeells. Former Sales Director, convinced that performance doesn’t happen by chance.
And you, what sales situation would your teams most need to practice?
#SalesPerformance #ArtificialIntelligence #SalesEnablement #SalesCoaching
