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Professional Services & Staffing

Practise the difficult call without spending a real prospect on it

Role-play training was hard to schedule, inconsistent between managers, and never quite reproduced the objections a rep actually meets. We built a simulator inside the tools the team already uses.

At a glance
Status
Delivered
Region
United States
Engagement model
Joint lab

Status: Delivered. Described from our own delivery records. Client identity, brand and commercial terms are withheld. Figures, where given, cover the period stated and nothing beyond it.

The organisation

Context

A staffing business whose sales representatives need to handle industry-specific objections in live conversations.

The established way of building that skill is role-play with a manager, which depends on the manager's availability, the manager's own skill, and both parties taking it seriously at nine in the morning.

The brief

The problem

  • Role-play sessions were difficult to schedule and therefore happened rarely.
  • Quality varied with whoever played the prospect.
  • Generic training scenarios did not reproduce the objections specific to the industries the team sells into.
  • New hires ramped slowly because their first real practice was often a real prospect.
  • Managers had no visibility into who was practising and where they were weak.
The work

What we built

A conversation simulator embedded in the team's existing collaboration platform

So practice happens where work already happens rather than in a separate system nobody opens.

An AI counterpart tuned to the industry

Producing the objections and hesitations representatives actually encounter.

Real-time coaching feedback and suggested phrasing

During the conversation.

Scoring, gap analysis and exportable transcripts

So a representative can see where the conversation went wrong and a manager can see engagement across the team.

Method

How we delivered it

  1. 1

    Collect real objections

    From recorded and remembered conversations — the simulator is only as good as the material behind it.

  2. 2

    Frame what “good” means

    Per category, with the sales leadership, before building any scoring.

  3. 3

    Prototype the conversation loop

    And test it with experienced representatives, who are the harshest and most useful critics.

  4. 4

    Add scoring and gap analysis

    Once the conversation itself was credible.

  5. 5

    Pilot with new hires

    Whose ramp is the clearest test.

Sequence

How it was phased

PhaseDurationWhat happens
1Objection collection & framing
2 wks

Real objections, scoring categories, definitions of good

2Conversation prototype
3–4 wks

The loop, tested with experienced reps

3Coaching layer
2–3 wks

Real-time feedback, suggested scripts

4Scoring & analysis
2–3 wks

Per-category scoring, gap analysis, transcript export

5Pilot
3–4 wks

New-hire cohort, engagement visibility for managers

Indicative phasing for work of this shape. Actual duration varies with data quality, access and decision speed.

Hand-over

What the client keeps

  • The simulator and its source
  • The objection library
  • Scoring definitions and rubric
  • Exported transcript history
Stack
Microsoft Teams integrationLLM conversation agentsPythonScoring and analytics
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