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This Can Predict if You're Persuasive or Not
Scientists trained an AI model to tell if you'll be a persuasive salesperson.
Good Morning! EY's global talent leader recently said that the most important soft skills an applicant can have are curiosity, adaptability, and influence. So… basically, she just described every sales rep's daily routine: being curious about why prospects ghost us, adapting when that "sure thing" deal falls through, and influencing people to take meetings they definitely don't want. Now let’s get into today’s Follow Up. 😁
What super specific questions mean❓️
This can predict if you’re persuasive 🤯
How sales rep perform at top AI startups 🤑
Sales jobs & a meme 😂
Sales Tip of The Day 💡
When a prospect asks a super specific question early in the call, there’s usually a hidden objective behind it.
Here’s how to respond:
❌ Sure. I’ll answer that in a sec, but first let’s go through…
✅ Good question. Let me ask, what made that top of mind right away?
This reveals the real reason they took the meeting, and gives you a shortcut to their pain points.
When this happens, drop the script and push into their pain points
Auto-write your follow up while you’re still on the call
You already crushed the call.
But your CRM’s still empty. Your follow-up’s late. And your manager’s in the dark. Attention.com fixes that. Automatically.
Instantly updates your CRM - no more “sorry, just getting back to you”
Writes follow-ups that sound like you (but better)
Scores reps with customizable scorecards (instant feedback)
Auto-generates sales decks based on real deal insights.
Instantly update your CRM and draft the perfect follow up email
Score every call with customizable scorecards
Automatically generate sales decks based on entire deal contexts
The AI That Can Predict if You’re Persuasive
Some people just sound convincing. You hear their voice, and your brain starts nodding before they’ve even finished what they’re saying.
But what makes someone persuasive?
Is it what they say? How they say it? Or maybe just something they’re born with?
A new study from Yale might have cracked the code. And it involves teaching AI to predict how good someone is going to be at selling.
Researchers fed an AI model videos of aspiring sales reps giving pitches. The AI analyzed everything from body language, voice tone, word choice, and even how they moved their hands.
Their goal was to predict who would become a persuasive salesperson before they ever made their first sale.
So today, we're breaking down the research findings and what it could mean for the future of sales hiring.
How it Went Down.
K. Sudhir, a professor at Yale School of Management, teamed up with researchers to analyze video recordings from the National Collegiate Sales Competition.
They wanted to figure out if AI could predict how persuasive someone is based on their pitch. Because that would be incredibly valuable when hiring sales reps…
Here’s what happened:
195 university students participated in mock sales pitches, selling SaaS to actual corporate reps.
The stakes were real because these interviews could lead to actual job offers.
AI systems tracked their body language, voice patterns, and word choices
The researchers broke down persuasion into three categories often studied in sales:
Content (what they said).
Style (how they said it).
Conversational Matching (how well they mirrored the interviewer).
What the AI figured out.
Content reigned supreme. Meaning, what people said mattered more than how they said it or how they moved.
But conversational adaptability, body language, and voice modulation also played a huge role. Which basically means that mirroring your prospect and controlling your tone are key pillars of selling.
But here’s what really matters… After all of the AI testing, they found that a human + AI hybrid did the best overall job at choosing job candidates based on persuasiveness.
Which means that just a human wasn’t as good as a human + AI.
And just AI wasn’t as good as AI + a human.
What This Means for Us
This research and the AI models being trained on persuasiveness could completely change how companies recruit and hire salespeople.
Instead of relying on resumes, interview questions, and gut feelings, hiring managers will be able to use AI to analyze candidate videos.
Companies will be able to:
Evaluate candidates from any school or background, not just top universities or reps from brand name companies.
Remove biases from the interview process.
Better predict actual sales performance
But there are legitimate concerns about AI in hiring. The EU's AI Act already classifies hiring applications as "high-risk" uses of artificial intelligence.
However, the researchers from this study acknowledge the risks in using AI in hiring, but also say: “We don't think about the hidden costs of not using AI”. and “We think these benefits of AI can outweigh the drawbacks.”
And I tend to agree. (:
Do you think AI should help make hiring decisions? |
