Sales onboarding with AI can be enjoyable and efficient

BY:  Rebecca Herson
March 16, 2022
Updated on March 3, 2024
7 MIN. READING

Table of Contents

Onboarding sales people is challenging. You want to integrate new employees into the company culture, teach them about your solutions and features, and share your value proposition and messaging, and you want to achieve all that as fast as possible so that they can start selling and you can prove ROI on your sales training.

But efficiency shouldn’t come at the cost of a potentially better, even fun, experience. An enjoyable onboarding process is one that’s more effective: the more engaged your new hires are with your onboarding material, the more likely they are to complete the course, the better their focus will be while doing it, and the more they’re likely to remember afterwards.

In 2022, L&D professionals are highly aware of this, and they’re looking for ways to make onboarding as enjoyable as possible. According to a recent survey, the primary challenge that L&D professionals are grappling with in 2022 is that of increasing learner engagement.

Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) is here to help! As onboarding and other training courses shifted online, integrating AI into the experience became both easier, and more obviously needed, and L&D professionals have been discovering the benefits it can bring. To that end, here are six  ways that AI helps you make onboarding enjoyable for your new hires and recertification fun for your existing employees, while helping boost your final results.

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1. AI makes onboarding interactive

Nobody enjoys sitting in lectures day after day, but instructor-led training (ILT) has been the keystone of every onboarding program for years. But thanks to AI, those days are waning. According to the 2022 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report , 73% of L&D professionals expect to spend less on ILT this year, and 79% to spend more on online learning, jumping from 38% and 57% respectively only two years ago.

Today, AI-powered sales training solutions (like Second Nature AI) allow L&D personnel to offer interactive, engaging onboarding programs instead of traditional frontal classes. For example, with Second Nature, new sales employees can enjoy practicing live sales conversations, thinking on their feet and interacting with the AI simulation instead of passively listening to instructions.

2. AI transforms sales onboarding into a social experience

Everything is more enjoyable when you do it with a friend, and 91% of L&D experts report that employees who learn together are more successful. But since so many sales teams went remote during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s been harder to bring new sellers together to share onboarding and certification experiences.

But once again, AI can save the day! Online AI-powered sales onboarding programs connect new salespeople no matter where they are located, so you can offer social learning even to hybrid and remote teams. Use AI like Second Nature to set up fun challenges that pit one team against the other, encouraging participation and friendly competition, and to display leaderboards that update in real time so sellers can compare their progress.

3. AI allows sales onboarding on demand

Just like in the best comedy, timing is everything for onboarding. Traditional onboarding processes meant either scheduled frontal lectures, or waiting until the manager had some free time to give feedback on the recording of their sales conversations. As a result, it was rare for onboarding to happen right when the new hire was feeling focused and alert.

But Second Nature’s AI-powered role play personas are always ready to go. New sellers can watch a video of the ideal sales pitch, then practice their own with a responsive simulation that gives targeted feedback on the spot, so your new hires can practice whenever it’s convenient for them.

4. AI supports gamified experiences

As Mike Fisher, head of enterprise sales productivity and enablement at Zoom, explains, everybody hates the word “certification.” But as he discovered, when you use Second Nature’s AI-powered solution to gamify your onboarding , you can replace “certification” with “challenges” and watch engagement skyrocket.

AI makes it possible to offer interactive learning experiences and team against team onboarding challenges that make new hires want to spend more time on certification. When new sales employees can have natural-feeling sales conversations with a realistic role play partner – who just happens to be played by AI – instead of taking notes on an onboarding playbook, they’ll enjoy it – and engage with it – far more.

5. AI tracks employee progress

Everyone loves seeing themselves improve in a skill or capability, but traditional onboarding programs can’t always give new hires that kind of satisfaction. It’s not easy to quantify your progress at sales conversations, and recalling a list of features doesn’t feel like much to pride yourself on.

But Jenny, Second Nature’s AI-powered sales coach, delivers consistent feedback that allows each seller to track their progress from conversation to conversation and day to day. Users get to see scores that break down their knowledge of the solution, pace, tone, use of filler words, and a number of other aspects, so each new hire can enjoy a sense of achievement.

6. AI personalizes onboarding experiences

It’s all about personalization nowadays, but traditional instructor-led onboarding made it difficult to provide different onboarding experiences for different sales employees. However, once you deploy AI, that changes. AI-powered training can provide each new hire with the onboarding course that suits their needs, learning style, and previous experience.

Second Nature’s AI-powered platform provides personalized feedback for every user, guiding them to understand their strengths and weaknesses and inviting them to practice the skills that they most need to improve.

With AI, onboarding can be effective, efficient, and enjoyable

Once you bring AI into your onboarding strategies, new hire experiences can change for the better. There’s no reason why effective and fun can’t go hand in hand, and once you use AI to gamify, socialize, and personalize onboarding programs, track employee progress, and make onboarding available on demand, you’ll marvel at the difference.

Request a demo of Second Nature AI today !

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About the author

Rebecca Herson

Rebecca is head of marketing at Second Nature.

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