In this episode
Sam Dorison, Co-founder and CEO of ReflexAI, joins Greg Kihlström to unpack the persistent gap between traditional sales training and real-world performance — and how AI-powered simulation closes it. Drawing on nearly a decade building generative-AI tools for high-stakes “critical conversations,” Dorison argues that marketing heavily curates the early buyer journey while reps are handed info sheets and left to improvise the moments that actually convert. The conversation covers why sales enablement ROI has to be fast and measurable, how deliberate-practice simulations build the muscle memory to pivot mid-conversation, why extra buyer questions are a signal to celebrate, and how to measure time-to-proficiency and skill-gap profiles precisely enough to compress onboarding.
Key takeaways
- The training gap opens in the live conversation. Marketing curates the early buyer journey, but reps get handed info sheets and PowerPoints and “best of luck” — so it’s no surprise strong sales teams don’t match strong marketing teams.
- Sales-enablement ROI has to be quick and measurable. Dorison’s view is blunt: anyone promising ROI three years out isn’t actually promising ROI in this space, because it can’t be calculated.
- Deliberate practice beat the benchmark by 3x. One organization rolling out a new offering saw a 30%-plus performance bump in under eight weeks, versus a typical ~10% lift, from well-honed simulations and immediate feedback.
- Simulation teaches how to think about answering, not rote scripts. The same question asked optimistically versus pessimistically demands a different response, and reps have to be good at both.
- The pivot is the skill that matters most. When a buyer’s scope changes mid-meeting — the finance contact just became ops director — reps have to adapt in real time to questions no prep could anticipate.
- Extra questions and extra people are buying signals, not friction. A prospect who brings their boss or a list of prepared questions is telling you they’re investing resources; treat it as a win, not an annoyance.
- Tools have to be self-serve and fast to set up. If configuration takes three months you’ll rarely get there, so customization has to be doable in minutes and in the customer’s own hands.
- Measure time-to-proficiency and diagnose skill-gap profiles. An 85% trainee who’s one fixable skill from 98% is a completely different case from an 85% trainee inconsistent across four skills who’d only reach 88% — and treating them the same wastes onboarding time.
- Simulation-based practice extends well beyond sales. The same approach applies to QBRs, manager-to-employee feedback, and evaluating candidates in hiring — the flight-simulator model, now available across far more roles.
Chapters
- 01:58 — Cold open: the last-mile sales conversation that goes off the rails
- 02:43 — Sam Dorison’s background and ReflexAI (gen AI since 2018)
- 04:39 — How sales-conversation quality shapes brand and lifetime value
- 05:37 — Why sales hasn’t kept up with marketing
- 06:56 — Coaching judgment, not scripts (optimistic vs. pessimistic questions)
- 07:43 — Reframing sales training as strategic, ROI-bearing work
- 09:25 — The 10%-to-30% performance bump
- 10:50 — Why scarce buyer attention makes performance matter more
- 13:12 — The pivot as a core skill
- 13:58 — Reading extra questions as a buying signal
- 16:49 — Fitting new tools into existing workflows
- 18:52 — Measurement: time-to-proficiency and skill-gap profiles
- 22:44 — The future: AI-assisted practice vs. live performance
- 24:58 — Simulation beyond sales (QBRs, hiring, customer success)
- 26:46 — One year out, and staying agile
Where the sales-training gap actually opens
Dorison frames the problem as a mismatch between two halves of the buyer journey. The early steps are heavily curated by marketing, but once a deal moves into in-person conversations, organizations have historically equipped reps with info sheets and PowerPoints and sent them in with “best of luck.” Because enablement hasn’t kept pace, he argues, no one should be surprised when excellent sales teams fail to match the performance of excellent marketing teams — the reps simply haven’t had the tools. The fix isn’t adding another tool for its own sake; it’s raising sales to the performance level an organization has already paid for through its acquisition spend.
Why ROI has to be fast and measurable
For Dorison, sales training and enablement have to carry ROI that is quick and measurable — his personal test is that ROI you can’t calculate for three years isn’t ROI at all, at least outside of hardware infrastructure. The near-term returns he points to are concrete: train someone faster and you can evaluate their performance sooner, saving both money and the HR limbo of wondering for nine months whether a hire will work out. Enablement should also capture the sales team’s contribution to specific campaigns and product launches, which is exactly where he saw a 30%-plus performance bump against a typical 10% for one new-offering rollout.
The pivot: the skill simulation is built to train
The highest-value moment, in Dorison’s telling, is the pivot. Buyer attention is rarer and more expensive than ever, so when a rep has it, performance matters more than ever — and buyers rarely stay on script. He describes simulations where the premise is that the finance manager you prepared for has just been promoted to ops director, and half their questions now have nothing to do with finance. The point is to practice pitching into a scope that’s bigger and less predictable than expected, building the situational awareness that no amount of single-path preparation can provide.
Read extra questions as a buying signal, not friction
Dorison reframes the moments reps often dread. When a prospect brings another person into the meeting, or shows up with seven additional questions they couldn’t answer from the website, they’re signaling that they’re investing scarce time and resources in the decision. Often a buyer pulls their boss in early precisely because they want to spend more than expected and will need sign-off. Rather than griping that they didn’t give a heads-up, he argues, teams should treat the added scrutiny as a colossal win and an opening.
Measure time-to-proficiency and skill-gap profiles
Getting big results, Dorison says, depends on measuring the right things — starting with time-to-proficiency defined so clearly that everyone knows when the bar is met (for example, explaining security features concisely to an IT director). The subtler discipline is reading skill-gap profiles: two trainees both at 85% can be completely different cases. One is 85% because a single weak skill drags them down and fixing it lifts them to 98%; the other is inconsistent across three or four skills and would only reach 88% by shoring up their weakest. Seeing that difference lets teams stop treating everyone the same, personalize the coaching, and compress onboarding — without the historical overhead of building separate materials per rep.
Where simulation goes beyond sales
Looking ahead, Dorison expects the models to keep improving (“today is always the starting point, never a destination”) and the aperture of conversations better handled without a human to keep widening — even as trust keeps a human in the loop for high-stakes decisions. The same simulation approach, he notes, extends across the value chain: rehearsing QBRs so teams present clearly and collaboratively, practicing manager-to-employee feedback, and running candidates through role simulations before hiring. It’s the flight-simulator model, now available across more industries and roles than ever before.
FAQ
Why do strong sales teams often underperform relative to marketing? Because enablement hasn’t kept up. Marketing curates the early buyer journey, but reps are typically handed info sheets and PowerPoints for the live conversations that actually convert, leaving a gap between classroom theory and real-world performance.
What ROI timeframe should sales enablement deliver? Fast and measurable. Dorison argues that ROI you can’t calculate for three years isn’t really ROI in this space — the returns should show up quickly in faster ramp time, earlier performance signals, and measurable contribution to specific campaigns.
How is AI simulation different from traditional role-play? It’s deliberate practice that trains judgment, not memorization. Reps learn to read emotional context — the same question asked optimistically versus pessimistically needs a different answer — and to pivot when a buyer’s scope shifts mid-conversation.
How should teams measure training effectiveness? Track time-to-proficiency measured consistently, then diagnose skill-gap profiles. Knowing whether a trainee is one fixable skill from 98% or inconsistent across several skills lets teams personalize coaching and compress onboarding.
Where can conversation simulation apply beyond sales? QBRs, manager-to-employee feedback, and candidate evaluation in hiring, among others. Dorison compares it to flight simulators — a training model now available across far more roles and industries.
About Sam Dorison
Sam Dorison is the Cofounder and CEO at ReflexAI. An expert in artificial intelligence strategy and product deployment, Dorison has been involved with AI-powered products in industries ranging from mental health to cybersecurity to smart cities. Before launching ReflexAI, he served as Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at The Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ young people. There, he published 5 peer-reviewed articles on mental health and oversaw teams including crisis services, training, research, technology, and finance. Dorison previously worked at McKinsey & Company and Harvard Kennedy School. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He also holds an LL.M. from Cambridge University and a master’s degree from University College London, both as a Marshall Scholar. Beyond ReflexAI, Dorison is heavily involved in causes that support families impacted by cancer. Dorison lives in New York City with his husband.
Sam Dorison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samdorison/
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ReflexAI: https://www.reflexai.com
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Transcript
[00:01:58] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. How much of your marketing and CX investment is being undermined in the final mile by a sales conversation that goes off the rails? Agility requires that our customer-facing teams can do more than just recite a script. They need the situational awareness to navigate complex conversations in real-time. This capability isn’t just a sales skill, it’s a critical component of the overall customer experience. Today we’re going to talk about the persistent gap between traditional sales training and real-world performance. Most reps forget the majority of what they learn, and classroom theory often fails to prepare them for the pressure and the unpredictability of live buyer interactions. We’re gonna explore how AI-powered simulation
[00:02:43] Greg Kihlström: is moving beyond static role play to create deliberate practice environments where teams can build the muscle memory needed for high-stakes conversations. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Sam Dorison, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Reflex.AI. Sam, welcome to the show.
[00:03:43] Sam Dorison: Thanks. It’s great to be here with you, Greg.
[00:03:45] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to talking about this. Before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Reflex.AI?
[00:03:51] Sam Dorison: Absolutely. So my background was really focused for the last decade or more on what we at Reflex call Critical Conversations. These are sales conversations, mental health conversations, customer support conversations, the types of conversations that make a big difference in the lives of individuals and in the success of organizations that they’re talking to. So we’ve been at this for close to a decade, and have been using generative AI tools in particular since 2018. That some of our earliest tools in 2019, 2020 were actually on Time 100 Best Inventions of the Year in 2021, the first generative AI use case on the Time 100. So we’ve been fortunate to be focused on these types of conversations for many years
[00:04:36] Sam Dorison: and see what works and see what doesn’t work.
[00:04:39] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Th- yeah. And that’s definitely well ahead of the, you know, m- most people were made aware of generative AI, you know, late 2022, so things like that, so, you know, several years, years ahead of that. So yeah, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about… Let’s, let’s start with the, the strategic role here. And, you know, you mentioned you, you work in, you know, complex conversations that, you know, the, the traditional, AI models or approach to AI, may, may struggle with a little bit. But, you know, in a, in a complex B2B buying journey, the brand experience is shaped by a lot of touch points, you know. It’s not just, there’s lots of decision-makers, there’s lots of meetings,
[00:05:25] Greg Kihlström: there’s, there’s lots of other things. How does the quality and consistency of those individual sales conversations impact the overall brand perception and even things like customer lifetime value?
[00:05:37] Sam Dorison: When we think about the buyer’s journey, many of the early steps are heavily curated by marketing, right?
[00:05:51] Sam Dorison: But then you get into the in-person conversations and you’ve left your sales reps essentially with info sheets and PowerPoints and said, “Best of luck.” … in these conversations.
[00:06:02] Sam Dorison: So it hasn’t kept up, right? And we shouldn’t be surprised then when really incredible sales teams are not matching the performance of really incredible marketing teams. They haven’t had the tools.
[00:06:13] Sam Dorison: So at Reflex, what we’re really thinking about is, what are those different buyers’ personas? And you can customize it yourself within the platform, right? To say, okay, if someone in your sales team is talking to someone from finance, what are the questions they’re likely to ask? What is a really effective and efficient answer to those types of questions? Now, don’t just practice memorizing it, but practice using those answers in conversation, right? Then they have an unexpected follow-up question. How do you respond to that, right? So realistic simulations is not just about, oh, let’s add another tool, or let’s swap out manual practice, but bringing sales to the performance level that organizations deserve given all the resources they’re investing in customer acquisition.
[00:06:56] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Well, ’cause, you know, humans are gonna ask… they’re gonna ask many variations to a question, but I’m sure they’re also… There are also… It’s, so it’s, yeah, I mean, it sounds like it’s more about understanding how to think about answering than, to your point, memorizing a s- a, a set of rote answers, right?
[00:07:14] Sam Dorison: That’s exactly right. And there’s an emotional aspect to it as well that you have to be able to pick up on. So, the same question can be asked optimistically and pessimistically, right?
[00:07:24] Sam Dorison: The optimistic version of, “I expect your vendor organization to have a great answer to this.” Your approach to answering the same question when it’s asked in an optimistic way versus a pessimistic way is quite different, right? And you have to be able-
[00:07:36] Sam Dorison: … to be able to be good at both, or you shouldn’t be surprised when you’re not seeing the conversion that you want to see.
[00:07:43] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Well, and that, some of that at least comes down to the, the sales training process, right? And so, you know, a lot of organizations are thinking of sales training as, you know, almost a check-the-box or, you know, a cost center that’s mainly focused on onboarding new salespeople. How do you-
[00:08:02] Greg Kihlström: … help leaders and, and organizations reframe this as something more strategic and, you know, with, with AI-driven components as well?
[00:08:13] Sam Dorison: I think for us, sales training, and sales enablement more broadly, right, has to have ROI attached to it. And my personal view is, a lot of that ROI needs to be quick and measurable, that anyone who promises ROI three years from now, they’re not actually promising ROI. Because if it can’t be calculated for three years, it’s not a ROI, right, in this type of space. This is not hardware infrastructure, right? So for-
[00:08:37] Sam Dorison: … for us, we think about this, okay, there’s a few things right off the bat. One is, if you can train someone faster, and they get in the role faster, you can evaluate their performance sooner. That’s great-
[00:08:47] Sam Dorison: … from a bottom line. It’s also great from an HR perspective, right? You’re not sitting there-
[00:08:52] Sam Dorison: … wondering for nine months, are they going to be good at this job? Right? They can be-
[00:08:56] Sam Dorison: … good at it sooner. They can give you that signal, and they can actually get results, right? So that’s one piece of it. And of course, you’re saving, you’re saving time and money along the way if folks aren’t sitting in training for longer, and they’re ramping faster, right? The second-
[00:09:09] Sam Dorison: … is your team is probably doing a lot of strategic work on, if you’re selling software, new product functionalities, if you’re selling, right, hardware or physical goods, what is the new marketing for the new season? Your sales team needs to be able to keep up with that, and they deserve to be able-
[00:09:25] Sam Dorison: … to keep up with that, right? In the same way that your marketing team does. So the ROI should also factor in, hey, when we run a new campaign, how, or we kind of have a new product offering, what is the results from that? And what was our sales team’s contribution to those results? You should be able to calculate that. We were working with one organization that was rolling out a new offering, and their typical, you know, typical rates of success, maybe you see a 10% bump. We were able to see a 30-plus percent bump in performance-
[00:09:54] Sam Dorison: … on the sales team in under eight weeks. And that’s because the team got to practice better, got immediate feedback on how they did in those simulations that were really well-honed to the buyer journey, right? And they got better, right? It sounds very simple to say, but they got better than they would have otherwise, and that translated directly through.
[00:10:14] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, 10, 10% to 30%, that’s (laughs) th- that’s impressive. Let, let’s talk a little bit about that. You know, what, i- in a, in this complex buying environment, and, you know, anyone that’s done B2B sales or, or marketing understands the, you know, the complexities here. How does, um… You know, you talked a little bit about this, but, you know, how does the quality and consistency of those sales conversations, you know, how is that built through, you know, through, through your platform, through the, th- through the training involved? Like, what d- what does that look like?
[00:10:50] Sam Dorison: Absolutely. So may- maybe to zoom out to start, Greg, we know buyer attention is rare, expensive, and valuable, and it’s actually only getting more rare, expensive, and valuable, right? For that AI has done a lot in, in the sales world. It’s done a lot across so many industries in the last several years. But when you do get buyer attention, that is a signal that is stronger than it’s ever been before, right?
[00:11:13] Sam Dorison: Because you actually have it in… You have them in front of you, whether it’s remotely or in person. So when you’re, when you have that opportunity, performance matters more than ever before. So when we think about these-
[00:11:22] Sam Dorison: … simulations, what that means is, can you pivot to whatever’s on their mind? So we have some partners-
[00:11:28] Sam Dorison: … that set up simulations that actually the premise is, you’re draw- you’re talking to the finance manager, right, at a potential buyer, but actually, they’ve just been promoted to ops director, and half of their questions have nothing to do with finance, and-
[00:11:41] Sam Dorison: … there was no way for you to know beforehand that was what they were interested in, right? Now, pitch them, right? Knowing that their scope is bigger and less predictable than you would have thought going into the conversation, right?
[00:11:53] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:12:19] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:04] Sam Dorison: can be done pretty quickly. But customization in a sense that you know what matters for your organization. That should be what’s in your simulations.
[00:13:12] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve, I’ve been there in- in the pivot. I mean, having done, for better or worse, having done sales most of my- most of my career, I’ve ha- personally have a hard time with the pivot. You know, you do so much research and you’re so prepared for this line of questioning. And to your point, someone has a whole different set of- of objectives or some new person gets invited to the meeting or something like that, you know, whatever the case is, all of a sudden there’s this- there’s this line of questioning that, you know, any- any amount of preparation down one path is- is difficult. So, yeah, that- that, you know, I’ll just call it agility, you know, in- in being able to answer those questions seems- that seems like a skill in and of its- regardless of the subject matter, right?
[00:13:58] Sam Dorison: Absolutely. And what we talk about with a lot of salespeople leaders and sales teams is, that is actually one of your best opportunities.
[00:14:06] Sam Dorison: When someone brings another person to a meeting, they are telling you straight up, “We are investing more resources in this than you expected.”
[00:14:15] Sam Dorison: Take it as a win, right? Or when they say, “Actually, I- I’ve thought about this. I have these other seven questions,” or, “I went through your website and here are the questions that I couldn’t find answers to,” that person has prepared for the meeting with you.
[00:14:28] Sam Dorison: Time is a scarce resource. If they are signaling to you, they’re investing time, that should be something that you celebrate, right? Let’s not live in a world where we say, “Ugh, this person had this sideline of questioning, so annoying.” Let’s live in a world where we say-
[00:14:41] Sam Dorison: … “This is actually great. They’ve thought about this in advance. They’ve told you what’s on their mind. You have an opportunity.” Right? Or they brought their boss into the conversation. Why? Often it’s because they want to spend more money with you than they expected upfront, and they’re going to need their boss’s sign-off so they’re trying to get their boss in as early as possible. That is a colossal win that they unexpectedly brought their boss. Let’s not gripe about the fact that they could have given you a heads-up. Let’s celebrate the fact that they brought another member of their team to the meeting and that person also has a bunch of questions.
[00:16:49] Greg Kihlström: You know, as good as the- the new process or new platforms can be, you know, one- one challenge is certainly working a new anything, you know, new process, platform, whatev- whatever it is, into existing workflows. How do you- how do you approach that to… Obviously, sales can’t slip and, you know, things need to keep moving, so you’ve got this- this integration. You know, what- what does that look like from your standpoint?
[00:17:14] Sam Dorison: Yeah, it’s- it’s a great question. So, I think a lot of us, we have been software buyers and we know the types of things that make our lives worse.
[00:17:24] Sam Dorison: At Reflex, what we have said, and I think every organization that’s working with tech vendors should say the same thing at this point, right, which is, “I don’t want something that will require extensive back-and-forth with the provider to get it set up. I want it in my hands.”
[00:17:39] Sam Dorison: “Can I set it up quickly? Because even if it’s going to be awesome, if it takes three months to set up, you’re never going to get there.” Right? Or you’ll very rarely get there, right? Or yeah, this is great out of the box. “Well, is it great out of the box for me or is it great out of the box for some generic company?” So, when we think about this, we think a lot about flexibility and customization, but we really focus on flexibility and customization that you can do in minutes and that you can do in your own hands. Because if you don’t have it in minutes in your own hands, it becomes really difficult to see any benefits from customization or flexibility. Right? And so for us, that means, you know, we, we have metrics around should you need to use huge amounts of real data to calibrate your simulations and your scoring dimensions? Absolutely not. Right? Should you be able to link
[00:18:24] Sam Dorison: it directly to your knowledge base in a secure way so that you don’t have to recycle all that information into a vendor’s different format? Absolutely not. Right? And we’ve really focused on building around, if we were on the other side of this, what would we want? And that’s mostly because a lot of us were on the other side of this for so long before we did this. Right? But if we were on the other side of the table, what would we want? And let’s just build that, right? It’s, it’s really quite straightforward when you, when you can do that.
[00:18:52] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. And so let’s talk a little bit more about measurement. And, and certainly, you know, you, you, mentioned a few really, impactful examples. But, you know, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, how do you get from that 10% to 30% number? You know, what d- what does that look like? What are the, whether it’s leading indicators, things like that, that kind of lead to getting such a high return on investment in a, in a relatively short amount of time? You know, what does that look like from a measurement standpoint?
[00:19:25] Sam Dorison: In order to get the, the big results, and this is, you know, we’ve just, we’ve seen this over years now with so many organizations, you have to know the right things to measure. So I’ll ge- I’ll give you a few examples of this. Certainly, you need to measure time to proficiency, right? And you need to measure time to proficiency in a consistent and clear way, where you actually … When someone meets the bar, you know they’ve met the bar, right?
[00:19:45] Sam Dorison: That’s, that’s kind of obvious, right? That’s a, “Hey, we can describe the security features of our product concisely and clearly, and I can hold every member of my sales team accountable for being able to explain those things to an IT director.”
[00:20:01] Sam Dorison: Right? Or, “We can explain our compelling value prop compared to our competitors in a way that is positive and optimistic about us.” All of that makes sense, right? Then you get into the, a lot of the nuances of training, which is if you look at, for example, two trainees that are both at an 85% performance halfway through training, right? They’re 85% of the way there. There is an enormous difference between the trainee who’s at 85%, but that’s largely because they keep messing up on one skill.
[00:20:30] Sam Dorison: And if they improve that one skill, they would be at 98, right? Versus another s- trainee who’s at 85% but actually is fairly inconsistent on three or four skills. So even if they just took their weakest skill and made it a strength, they’d only jump to 88, right?
[00:20:44] Sam Dorison: So an 85 with one skill missing to 98 is a completely different profile than someone with an 85 with a one skill gap to 88, and then another skill gap-
[00:20:55] Sam Dorison: … to 91, another skill gap to 94, and you go from there, right? So it’s really about l- being able to see those trends and say, “This person’s 85, but actually in four days, we can have them ready to go. This person’s at an 85, they’re weeks away.” Right? And if you can see that clearly, you start to compress onboarding time and you start to improve performance, because you’re not treating everyone the same, which historically we’ve done in sales, because there’s no time or way to do it differently. Right? If you can treat people differently based on performance and do it efficiently, it’s a no-brainer, right? But you have to get yourself-
[00:21:30] Sam Dorison: … there as an organization by having the right tools, which is, I would say, where Reflex tends to be the most helpful tool on the market.
[00:21:37] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and I mean, to me, that’s, um … You know, that speaks back to the, the idea of just thinking of sales training as, as this mandatory, you know, check the box kind of onboarding thing, plus just treating the internal … Basically doing personalization like you almost would for a customer, right? It’s, but it’s personalizing the sales training for the, the individual teams, right?
[00:22:02] Sam Dorison: Exactly. And historically, that has meant, hey, we want sales training to be differentiated. We need to have different PowerPoints and different worksheets-
[00:22:11] Sam Dorison: … for different members of our team. It is no surprise why no one wants to do that, right?
[00:22:15] Sam Dorison: It feels like an enormous amount of work. But in the simulation world, you can have that customization and personalization without needing the huge capital outlays to get there.
[00:22:27] Sam Dorison: So the, the ROI calculation is completely different, right? When people hear customization, historically, including myself, I hear huge amounts of overhead to develop a customized thing. Eh, kind of screw it, right? But when you can get those benefits without incurring the costs, you want those benefits.
[00:22:44] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So let’s talk a little bit about the future, future things here. And, you know, a- as the technology continues to mature, certainly, you know, you’ve been a- an adopter of, of gen AI from, you know, well, well before many (laughs) have even, even knew it was a thing, right? where do you see the line between AI-assisted practice and AI-assisted live performance? You know, where w- where, where does that line start to blur, or is it already starting to blur?
[00:23:16] Sam Dorison: It’s, it’s certainly already starting to blur. One thing I would say, and this has been true since we started using gen AI in 2018, early 2019, the models will never be worse than they are today.
[00:23:27] Sam Dorison: So today is always the starting point, today is never a destination, right? And on top of that, there will always be things where talking to a human is worse, less efficient, less fun. However, in high-stakes buying decisions, trust will always be critical, and there … and those preferences will always exist. So I think this is … On the one hand, this is AI is new. On the other hand, we saw this in the digital evolution as well, of there were some things that you didn’t want to have to talk to a person to solve. You wanted to go to the website, right, and see the Q&A there, or tech specs, right, or-
[00:24:13] Sam Dorison: … pricing, whatever it might be. So we need to be really, really clear-eyed about what are the types of questions and journey steps for which talking to a human is desirable and valuable, and what are the steps where it isn’t. And that means finding the steps that are, that do have it be desire and vi-, desirable and valuable-
[00:24:36] Sam Dorison: … and executing accordingly.
[00:24:39] Sam Dorison: Versus the ones where the buyer doesn’t want to talk to a human or isn’t valuable, well, why are you taking up your salesperson’s time in those components? They could be prospecting or doing something else. So there is an element of we all need to be realists about this. But as we’re realists about this, we can continue to optimize both the human steps and the non-human steps.
[00:24:58] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and, looking beyond the initial sale or even, you know, s-, follow-ups and things like that, what, where do you see the big potential for this type of training? I mean, in other customer-facing roles, you know, customer success, account management. You know, where, where do you see some of the biggest opportunities here for a similar approach to, to training?
[00:25:21] Sam Dorison: Yeah. W- we see huge opportunities throughout the value chain. So a few, one, for example, is we know the value of QBRs versus just a summary deck at the end of a quarter or near the end of a contract cycle.
[00:25:35] Sam Dorison: You should be exceptional at QBRs. You should be able to present clearly and collaboratively, get input, get questions, connect that to the feedback you’ve gotten over the last several months from the, from the customer. So if you’re doing QBRs, it’s worth practicing QBRs and making sure that everyone’s doing it at the highest possible level. Because, again, you’re asking your customer for time and they’re giving you their attention. Those are really valuable moments. We also see a huge value in simulations in talent evaluation. So before we hire, right, having folks go through simulations of the role. And that could be, right, for salespeople, that could be for managers giving feedback to team members, that simulations are not only valuable in, for practice in the
[00:26:20] Sam Dorison: buyer and sales team member dynamic, it’s also valuable in the manager giving feedback to employee dynamic. It’s valuable in the assessing candidates in the hiring process dynamic. Right? There’s a lot of other areas in which simulation-based training is valuable. We first saw this, right, in pilot training and pilot practice with flight simulators. This is now available across more industries than ever before.
[00:26:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, Sam, thanks so much for joining today. Got a couple of questions for you as we wrap up here. the first one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:26:59] Sam Dorison: So, Greg, this has been fun. Would love to have this conversation again one year from today, but, you know, we can-
[00:27:05] Sam Dorison: … we can project out even, even from today. I think first and foremost, we’re going to be talking about better and more powerful AI tools, both for the types of conversations that it doesn’t make sense for humans to have in the future, that aperture is gonna continue to widen, and being able to pr- improve team performance even more deeply. That if we were having this conversation a year ago, we might not have been talking about the same patterns of what does it mean when someone asks this question in an optimistic versus pessimistic way, what do these one skill gaps versus two skill gaps look like. So we’re going to, I would strongly expect, continue to improve the kind of analytics on top of human performance and be assessing human performance in different ways compared to kind of AI performance.
[00:27:51] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. And last question for you, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:27:59] Sam Dorison: It, it’s a great question. The, first and foremost, you gotta use the tools. Secondly, you gotta talk to people who use them. So a huge amount of my time is spent, whether it’s with Reflex tools, right, with other AI tools that we use within the organization, making sure that I’ve got a pulse on it, and then talking to our customers. I’m just coming back from a conference last week where I think talked to 10, 15 of our current customers across wide, a different, a wide range of roles on how they’re using Reflex, what’s great, what’s painful, and you’ve got to keep hearing both sides of that.
