The Future of Sales Coaching with Varun Puri & Ajay Jain

Previously this season, we explored how AI is transforming the world of sales coaching. Today, in this episode, we’re diving a bit deeper into that topic by chatting with two incredible guests from the AI coaching platform, Yoodli. 

Varun Puri, Co-Founder of Yoodli, and Ajay Jain, Head of Training and Enablement at Yoodli are here to break down exactly how their platform is revolutionizing the way sales professionals refine their communication skills. 

Both bring such great points to the table, like: 

• How AI coaching can be a really great “batting cage” for sellers 
• Why AI tools like Yoodli are making the idea of practice fun versus it feeling like homework 
• And, finally, how AI can take someone from a zero to an 8, but to get from an 8 to a 10? You need a human in the loop. 

LINKS:

Varun Puri

Ajay Jain

Yoodli

Matt Sunshine

Practice Coach AI

The Center for Sales Strategy

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Revolutionizing Sales Communication With AI

Matt Sunshine 0:05

Welcome to Improving Sales Performance , a podcast highlighting tips and insights aimed at helping sales organizations realize , and maybe even exceed , their goals . Here we chat with thought leaders , experts and gurus who have years of sales experience from a wide range of industries . I'm your host , matt Sunshine , ceo at the Center for Sales Strategy , a sales performance consulting company . Previously this season , we explored how AI is transforming the world of sales coaching . Today , in this episode , we're diving a bit deeper into that topic by chatting with two incredible guests from the AI coaching platform , Yoodli .

Matt Sunshine 0:50

Varun Puri , co-founder of Yoodli , and Ajay Jain , head of training and enablement at Yoodli , are here to break down exactly how their platform is revolutionizing the way sales professionals refine their communication skills . Both bring such great points to the table , like how AI coaching can be a really great batting cage for sellers , why AI tools like Yoodli are making the idea of practice fun versus it feeling like homework . And , finally , how AI can take someone from a zero to an eight , but to get from an eight to a 10 , you still need that human in the loop . With that , let's jump into the conversation . Varun , let's start with you . Can you share the story behind Yoodli ? I mean , what inspired you , your co-founder . What inspired you to co-found a company that's focused on AI communication coaching ?

Varun Puri 1:58

Yeah , first off , matt , huge thank you for having me here . What an honor . It's awesome to be working with you and to be on your show and to be talking about the Yoodli dream my favorite thing to do . Look , I think the dream is simple . It's too many smart people in the world struggle to speak with confidence and they miss out on opportunities they deserve because they don't back themselves . This is the introvert , the woman who gets talked over in corporate America , the immigrant , the non-native English speaker , the kid in India , a version of myself who came to the US , struggled , trying to fit in practice in front of a mirror , a camera , a stopwatch . Wasn't proud enough to ask a friend to give feedback . Stopwatch wasn't proud enough to ask a friend to give feedback , and I just think we can help so many people with this idea of private and judgment-free feedback . I don't think AI is necessarily the solution . I think the problem's more exciting . We think AI can be part of it . If not AI , we'll find another way to come and hit it .

Matt Sunshine 3:04

Yeah , I love the why , right , I love the purpose . I love the why behind the company . I think having that why drives fantastic solutions , but you got to have that why . So , for anyone listening to this that is unfamiliar with Yoodli , can you give us an overview of how the platform works and what makes it unique in the coaching space ?

Varun Puri 3:28

Yep , I'll try to keep it short . One-liner is Yoodli's like Grammarly for speech , when you think about private real-time analytics or the equivalent of what Duolingo has done to language learning , but in this case , for speech coaching , Yoodli's like your private judgment-free mirror . You can come and practice for any conversation , a crucial conversation , a podcast like this , a speech , an interview , a date and Yoodli will go back and forth with you and then give you personalized feedback on how you can improve .

Matt Sunshine 4:01

Yeah , and I will tell you as someone who has used the product it's amazing . It's just , it's so hard . I find when I describe it I don't do it justice , like that's the best . I just want people to see it and I'm so proud . At the Center for Sales Strategy , we are partners , we work together . We customize the Yoodli tools for our sales coaching so that our clients can take advantage of it . But tell us , how does Yoodli support customization for organizations so it aligns with their unique needs ?

Varun Puri 4:41

Yeah , it's a great question . You know , I was at Google before this and I realized Google had a gazillion trainings , new pricing , new packaging . Well , there's an AE who's been put on a pip , a sudden new Android announcement and folks will be running around trying to figure out how to get you know people trained up and ready in the Google methodology . This might be call them users , not customers , or start with a smile , or whatever that might be . Band , medic , med pic everyone has their own version . Could be use the rule of threes , pause here , et cetera . And the idea is look , organizations across the world have their own way of conducting trainings . Let them take Yoodli , make it their own . Same way CSS has around your bespoke curriculum , your content , your way of doing things and , ideally , Yoodli is just an augmentation of the human coach . It's not nearly as good enough as a human coach , but it's a really good batting cage or practice tool that feels like it's from the human coach .

Matt Sunshine 5:41

Right , that's so well said . It's almost like you know your product really really well . I bet you've practiced this .

Varun Puri 5:48

Or I say the same thing so many times . I'm just becoming more and more boring .

Matt Sunshine 5:54

So , AJ , let's come over to you for this one . From your experience in the training and the enablement world , how does AI contribute personalizing sales coaching compared to other traditional methods that are out there ?

Ajay Jain 6:12

Yeah , I love this question and , as you know , I've been in sales for two decades now , and I think everyone agrees that practice and role play are important , not just in sales , even , like you mentioned earlier , whether it's sports , whether it's music , really any profession you want to practice to get better . Traditionally , this was done in a room , in front of your peers . It's incredibly awkward , it's hard to scale , it's not objective . Typically , your role play partner doesn't know how to act like a buyer or what their pains are . It may happen on a Friday afternoon , it might happen once every three months , the feedback isn't objective , and so AI helps solve all of those challenges . It's scalable , it's objective , it can be done on demand and , to your point of practicing .

Ajay Jain 7:04

With the AI , the buyer knows what challenges it's dealing with . It knows out of the box the types of objections a buyer may have in that situation , and so , for teams that are already doing role play , we're able to help them scale up and do it in an objective fashion . The reality , though , is , sadly , most teams don't even do in-person role play today , or when they do , it might be once every three months , and you get one shot , and the feedback again is like kind of hit or miss in most cases .

Impact of AI Coaching on Sales

Ajay Jain 7:40

I can say this confidently because I've had this conversation . I kept count , I think , maybe 350 times since I started at Yidli about six months ago .

Matt Sunshine 7:50

You know one of the things that I was sharing with you guys . Before we turned on the microphones and started recording , I was sharing . I was with a client yesterday that's using the product and one of the experiences from a veteran seller . I said so what'd you think ? We're having a one-on-one conversation ? I said so what'd you think ? And he said I don't know , I don't know , I don't know , I don't know , I don't know , I don't .

Matt Sunshine 8:14

She said you know what it said . I only got a two out of five on active listening and so I just paused and I was listening . So she goes , it was right . She said when I read what I could do to improve my active listening , it was 100% right . And if I'm being honest with myself , that's an area of my game I have to improve in . I mean , that's tremendous .

Matt Sunshine 8:45

And you know , had she ever heard that feedback from a human coach ? Maybe , possibly , I would imagine over the years she did . But something about it being a one-on-one experience where it was judgment-free and she wasn't looking at that person like , oh , you're just mad at me because I didn't do something right or I didn't close that other deal . It just resonated so much more . And if she can move that from a two out of five to a four out of five with practice . Over time that might mean millions of dollars of revenue for that company . Job well done , so I wanted to pass that along to you . So can you share any data or any insights that highlight the impact of coaching on improving sales outcomes or boosting seller confidence ? Do you have any data that you can point to ?

Ajay Jain 9:40

So we have Yvonne , do you want to take this ? No , no , no , after you . Yeah , so we AJ first , and then Varun , sure . So we've gotten some great data from companies we've been working with . One of the great success stories is a company we work with called USB Payments , and so within 30 days of deploying Yoodli and it's really cool they use it to warm up their reps every morning before they hit the phones , and then they'll actually update scenarios real time with the types of objections that may be coming up every week or every month .

Ajay Jain 10:16

What they found is , within 30 days , they were able to increase the number of meetings that they were booking by 19% , and that on its own , sounds interesting . That could be like a big , flashy number to throw out there . It sounds like a 19% . Maybe that correlates with a 19% improvement in pipeline . In their case it was actually higher because they took the step of going one level deeper . They found that the quality of meetings that were booked were higher than previously , on top of the volume , because these were now better qualified meetings , folks were staying on the phone longer , objections were being handled better , and so for them it's a no brainer . I mean , they saw less than 30-day return on investment in investing in AI coaching .

Matt Sunshine 11:02

That's amazing , right , and that's absolutely amazing , varun . Any other things you want to add ?

Varun Puri 11:07

I mean , aj has given you the numbers . We have a bunch of case studies . I think what I'm most proud of is I think for the first time we're making practice fun . You know we did this rollout with Google a large part of their org , 15,000 plus sellers , and it was 92% plus CSAT . But more than that , sellers would come to their leaders and be like , oh my God , I couldn't beat this AI bot . Oh , can you believe what it said to me ? And then they'd share their recordings with one another and to me . If we can , you know , at a high level , get people to get comfortable recording themselves and watching themselves and cringing , that's all that matters . You do that three times . You're going to get better and I'm really excited that it's not as uncomfortable and it's a little bit more fun when you're doing it with this bot .

Matt Sunshine 12:22

It is actually kind of fun , especially when , the first time you do the role play , you don't have all the success that you thought you would , and then you're like no way , I'm doing that , I want to do that one . Some new technology and getting better and better . What innovations do you see shaping the future of AI driven sales coaching ? How does Yudley plan to stay ahead of the curve and maybe even backtrack us and share with us some things that you've rolled out over the last 60 to 90 days ? And then , if there's anything coming in the pipeline that you can share , that'd be great too .

Varun Puri 12:47

Maybe I can start . Look , I think , things that have come up in the last few months . Our engineering team has just been sprinting . Yoodli now works in most major languages . You can share your screen and Yoodli will be fast enough and quick enough to say well , matt , your pricing slide number three says $20 . Why are you quoting me $50 ? You can use this for customer service engineering enablement as well .

Effective Implementation of AI Coaching

Varun Puri 13:12

What I'm most excited about is just this idea of a ubiquitous practice coach . So Yoodli lives within your CRM , within your LMS . Yudli is by your side anytime you're speaking . Right , it's my private coach that's poking me under the table , being like Varun shut up , ask more questions right now , or Varun , you're getting too excited . Just slow down and try to understand whether they actually have a pain point or not .

Varun Puri 13:37

And the idea here is how do we make it truly private ? It only takes my voice , so there's some smart machine learning involved . Nobody else knows I'm using it . Right ? That's the biggest aha with practice . No matter how good you are , you likely practice a bunch , but you don't want to be known as a guy who does that , and I think Yoodli enables that . So a lot of that better avatars to make the role play seem more realistic . You know , you can literally upload your manager's face and their voice and Yoodli will go back and forth in their persona . We got in trouble a few times doing this , but I think sellers enjoy it quite a bit . Aj , what am I missing ?

Ajay Jain 14:12

Yeah , so I mean that's looking forward . Looking back , I have worked with three of the engineers on this team previously , which was a big part of the reason Barn was able to talk me into joining the company , because I have the experience of working with this build team and they move incredibly fast . So to me , one of the biggest leaps we've made , just even in the last month , is adding support for multiple languages , which enables us to work with a lot of global organizations . So that's been super exciting . And then you know , you've seen it firsthand . But the ability to freeform type thoughts into Yoodli and hit the rephrase button or the generate button to me is so cool . Like you don't have to be an AI engineer or a prompt engineer to set this stuff up , and I know personally , for me , when I'm able to show demos for customers to be able to set something up within a couple of minutes , it's just , it's game changing for me .

Matt Sunshine 15:09

Yeah , absolutely All right . So communication is often regarded as a human skill , right , and that is what it's what most people think of the art of communication . So how does AI effectively coach for nuanced areas like empathy or tone , or how does it have that adaptability in a sales conversation ?

Varun Puri 15:36

I think AI can do that well , but not human level . Right ? Ai is really really good at giving you feedback on did you use a certain kind of framework ? Did you hit talking points ? How did you do on the mechanics of your speech ?

Varun Puri 15:50

One of the things that I feel strongly about is something like your authenticity or your vulnerability AI will take a shot at . For instance , we do a pretty good job saying Varun , you sounded nervous on this call , but the real essence of closing a deal or getting someone to be convinced is the human in the loop , which is why , matt I mean , we're partnering with coaching companies such as Osweitz very much . Look , the AI will take you from a zero to an eight . Our goal is not to make robots , it's not to have everyone sound the same , but to get from an eight to a 10 , you've got to reinforce it with a human coach and then use AI once again . It's very much think of us as like the medical report . If you're the doctor right , or TurboTax , you can use it on your own , but hey , if you've got the complicated tax stuff , you got to work with your accountant , the complicated tech stuff .

Matt Sunshine 16:39

You got to work with your accountant , yeah . So final question and , aj , maybe you want to hit this one first and then Verun will come back to you but for anyone , for any organization or for any person that is considering integrating AI into their sales coaching strategy , what advice would you give them to ensure that they're going to have a successful adoption , that they're going to be able to really maximize the experience of this ? What are some of the best practices , so to speak , of doing this the right way ?

Ajay Jain 17:14

No , this is a great question and I've spent a lot of time thinking about this . I think it comes down to workflow , and when I say that , what I mean and this is why we love partnering with organizations like Center for Sales Strategy is role play . In a lot of organizations , it's not already ingrained as part of their ongoing workflow for training and enablement . It might be part of onboarding . Like I said earlier , it might be part of your sales kickoff , it might be something that's done ad hoc every three months or something like that .

Ajay Jain 17:44

So the first thing to make it effective is that you have to figure out where it fits in to your existing workflow and make space for it . And again , that's why we love working with folks like yourself , because you're coming to an organization with that workflow in place . You're saying you know , here's your training , maybe here's your video , maybe you're going to take a quiz . Now do role play ? This is part of the workflow to make you a better seller , and so , for organizations that haven't been thoughtful about that , you at least really just a tool , and if you haven't figured out how to incorporate it into the flow of work , it's just going to be a tool that sits on the shelf .

Matt Sunshine 18:26

Yeah , Varun anything for you to add to that ?

Varun Puri 18:29

No , I love that . Aj said that and that's very much our approach . Right , we don't want to go sell . You know this snazzy , cool tool and folks buy it , but they're like , well , why didn't people use it ? At the core , we are fighting behavior change . I don't think AI is going to fix behavior change , but it can be positioned in clever ways to get people to practice .

Varun Puri 18:50

A really simple example is I did this actually when we were landing our first few Google deals that it's really hard to convince Google , like super sales team , really really deep infrastructure when it comes to enablement to use Yoodli . All I did was I found a bunch of the you know executive speeches online . I uploaded it to Yoodli and I sent it to the team and I'm like , hey , just FYI , this is what your team sounds like . And people are like , oh my God , nobody's ever had the guts to tell us this . And oh , shoot , I didn't realize I did this and I did that . It'd be really cool . If you know , I had it five years ago . In fact , I wish I had it before , like my investor update . Oh , and you know there are five people on my team . I think when we can be clever with little things like these , where it's like show , don't tell , and get people to see the value on their own such that they want to spread it , it gets really exciting .

Matt Sunshine 19:37

Yeah , I'll chime in on this because we've had some experience getting some people to adapt to it . And one thing that we've worked hard is , at least in the sales world , role play are like two dirty four letter words , right , sales people don't like role play , and the reason why they don't like it is usually it's because when you're not doing well , your punishment is we're going to make you role play . And the reason why they don't like it is usually it's because when you're not doing well , your punishment is we're going to make you role play . So that , right , there starts off as it's what you do . When you're not good , you role play . And the second thing is many times role play is okay . Today we're going to do role play and it's surprise and AJ , you're not ready for it , but you're role playing , go right , and that's not good either . Like you want to watch me role play , being surprised and not know what I'm doing . That doesn't sound interesting and you have a not so negative . You have a negative experience in people .

Matt Sunshine 20:42

One of the reasons why we've tried to share with people , it's practice . We're just going to keep practicing . We're going to give you really good coaching and really good feedback , whether that is , with a human or with an AI . We want you to practice and get feedback , and I think , aj , you said it well , it has to be part of that workflow . This is how we do it here . We warm up every day before we do our calls . We have a warm-up session . We spend 20 minutes doing a few of these each . That is part of the routine . It works really well , aj Averoon . Any final thoughts ?

Ajay Jain 21:22

Yeah , I just want to add to your point about the negative connotation of role play . I love speaking with customers . I think I'm very comfortable speaking with customers , but if you put me in a room with 20 or 30 of my peers to role play , I'm a train wreck . I get so nervous and it took me a while to pinpoint what it is . When I'm speaking with a customer , I'm the expert on my product . When I'm in a room with 30 of my peers , each of them knows something about the product that I don't , and so that is incredibly , incredibly awkward and it makes me so nervous . And that's where I think Yudli really helps bridge the gap , because it's private , it's judgment-free . My peers aren't sitting there thinking , oh , he could have said this , he could have said that .

Matt Sunshine 22:10

Yeah , love it Varun .

Varun Puri 22:13

AJ , I get it . That's why you botched all of our role . No , I'm joking . No , I think the other piece of role play that's fun is people often think of it as just you know , homework . How do we change it to something that you need just in time , not just before your sales pitch like you're presenting to your manager tomorrow ? Go role play . You're advocating for a promotion ? Chat , go role play . It's just part of what you do .

Matt Sunshine 22:37

Right , it's just part of what you do . All right , this has been a fantastic discussion . Thank you so much for joining us . Thank you for coming on the show . I really appreciate it .

Matt Sunshine 22:48

I value your partnership and I know that people probably want to connect with you in some form or fashion . So in the show notes we will have your LinkedIn . We'll have so they can connect to you on LinkedIn , and I know that you're both very responsive people , and so I would encourage anyone that wants more information to reach out to either one of you on LinkedIn and do that , and for everyone that has joined us today to listen thank you so much , I really appreciate it has joined us today to listen . Thank you so much , I really appreciate it , and we look forward to seeing you on future shows and the next episode of the Improving Sales Performance podcast . This has been Improving Sales Performance . Thanks for listening . If you like what you heard , join us every week by clicking the subscribe button For more on the topics covered in the show . Visit our website , thecenterforsalesstrategycom . There you can find helpful resources and content aimed at improving your sales performance .