Pega launches first AI-Powered Sales Coach to teach smarter selling

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – March 6, 2018 – Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), the software company empowering customer engagement at the world’s leading enterprises, today announced Pega® Sales Coach, an industry-first capability within Pega® Sales Automation that helps sales managers develop better salespeople and predict their future success. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Pega Sales Coach provides personalized coaching suggestions in real time so managers can more easily help each seller beat their quota.

For most organizations, understanding why a seller succeeds or fails can be a dark art. This is because they rely on sales force automation (SFA) tools that simply track the seller’s basic actions – such as the volume of calls, meetings, and offers. While typical SFA tools show what sales reps are doing, it doesn’t reveal why it leads to certain outcomes or suggest how to improve them. Managers then fall back on fuzzy metrics, such as pipeline volume, that don’t give a true picture of seller effectiveness. Meanwhile, they typically need 12 to 18 months to accurately evaluate a new seller’s performance – which can add up to lost time, wasted training resources, and missed sales.

Pega Sales Coach uses AI to evaluate a seller’s performance by analyzing more than 50 distinct actions a typical sales rep takes each day. The software proactively alerts managers to underperforming sellers and generates real-time coaching tips to help them initiate, progress, and close more deals. An intuitive set of dashboards gives managers an at-a-glance view into their entire team’s performance and tracks progress against coaching plans. Pega’s predictive analytics can give insight into the likelihood of success for new sellers in as little as three months – enabling organizations to react faster to underperformance trends.

Pega Sales Coach is now a standard feature within Pega Sales Automation, which helps organizations sell smarter, bust quotas, and simplify sales. While traditional sales tools typically serve as a Rolodex of miscellaneous sales data, Pega Sales Automation uses built-in AI to intelligently and dynamically guide each sales professional through every sales situation. Pega Sales Automation connects sales with other enterprise systems, such as in marketing and customer service, so decisions aren’t made in silos. This enables organizations to accelerate lead-to-cash timeframes and streamline work across the entire business. Forrester Research has named Pega Sales Automation the top ranked current offering in its latest The Forrester Wave™ report evaluating Sales Force Automation solutions. (1)

In addition to Pega Sales Coach, other features included in this latest Pega Sales Automation release include:

• Pega Knowledge, which intelligently delivers accurate and consistent content to sales teams based on the specific sales stage, industry, or competitor of focus.
• AI-based lead ranking, which integrates 19 predictors that span lead, contact, organization, and sales representative data to help individuals prioritize lead qualification and follow-up.

Pega Sales Coach is available today for Pega Sales Automation customers with current support contracts. It will also be demonstrated at the PegaWorld conference to be held on June 3-6 in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand. For more information on Pega Sales Automation and Pega Sales Coach, visit http://www.pega.com/sales or watch the webinar The Shift to AI-Empowered Sellers.

Quotes & Commentary

“Until now, the only clear and reliable sign of an organization’s sales performance came when the sale was won or lost,” said Don Schuerman, CTO and vice president, product marketing, Pegasystems. “Using predictive analytics, each sales rep can now get real-time coaching that will impact deals in progress and uncover hidden leads and opportunities. We’re redefining sales automation from a static database into a dynamic assistant that makes good sales people great.”

Supporting Resources

• Webinar: The Shift to AI-Empowered Sellers
• Video: Pega Sales Automation in action
• Product background: Pega Sales Automation
• Insights: Pega Sales Automation and AI

1. Forrester Research: The Forrester Wave™: “Sales Force Automation Solutions, Q2 2017,” by John Bruno with Stephen Powers, Chad Rafferty, and Ian McPherson, June 27, 2017