The pressure is real. Buyers are moving faster. Expectations are rising. Decision cycles are tightening. And leaders are being asked to deliver more with less while redesigning their teams, processes, and tech stacks for a very different future.

In this episode of SalesTV, we explore how Sales leaders can prepare their sales teams for 2026 by combining human expertise with AI-assisted commercial systems. We’re joined by Mikhail Belov. With two decades of leadership roles across sales, operations, and commercial management in Europe, Asia, and the U.S., Mikhail brings hands-on insight into how large, complex organizations modernize sales behavior and performance. His recent keynote at Emory University, “Driving Sales and Commercial Excellence in the Age of AI” is the inspiration for this conversation.

We’ll ask questions like -

* What high-impact use cases are emerging for AI in enablement, training, and coaching?

* What is AI good at in a commercial sales setting and where does it fall short?

* How can Sales Leaders build future-ready sales competencies without overwhelming sellers?

* How can organizations evaluate whether new AI-driven sales tools genuinely add value or simply create noise?

Mikhail Belov is the Global Sales and Commercial Learning and Competency Manager at SLB, where he leads a team of experts delivering more than 300 commercial, sales, negotiation, communication, and customer-centricity programs across 30+ global locations and thousands of learners annually. With over 20 years of global experience across sales, commercial strategy, negotiations, bidding, operations, and leadership roles, he brings a rare combination of practitioner insight, technical depth, and real-world operational credibility.

We broadcast live Tuesdays at noon Eastern. Join us live and be part of the conversation.

This week's Guest was -

• Mikhail Belov, Global Sales and Commercial Learning and Competency Manager at SLB

This week's Host was -

• Rob Durant, CEO of US Operations at The Institute of Sales Professionals

Transcript of SalesTV.live Mid-Day Edition 2025-12-02

Rob Durant [00:00:02]:

,Hello and welcome to another edition of SalesTV Live. Today we're discussing how AI is transforming sales and commercial excellence for 2026 and beyond. We're joined by Mikhail Belov. Mikhail is the Global Sales and Commercial Learning & Competency Manager at SLB. Mikhail leads a team of experts delivering more than 300 programs across more than 30 global locations. Together they enable thousands of learners annually. His recent keynote at Emory University, "Driving Sales and Commercial Excellence in the Age of AI," is the inspiration of today's conversation. Mikael, welcome.

Mikhail Belov [00:00:49]:

Rob, thank you very much for inviting and for introduction. Excited to be here.

Rob Durant [00:00:58]:

Excellent. So, Mikhail, let's jump right into it. What do you see as upcoming changes in sales and commercial excellence and what part is AI playing in that?

Mikhail Belov [00:01:12]:

Well, I think it's hard to ignore the fact in the end of 2025 that AI is transforming our lives and it really push us to rethink how we do things daily. From simple tasks like drafting an email to more complex opportunities to improve. You know, we are not financial advisors or doctors and we are not trying to replace them, but definitely it helps us to prepare better and be more confident in the subject where we are not experts. And this is just some of the examples. So in a similar way AI transforms our daily lives. We need to rethink how we perform sales and sales enablement and sales training operations and really challenge ourselves and how we do things and improve quality and efficiency and the pace with which we move in achieving our business objectives.

Rob Durant [00:02:11]:

Excellent. So what is AI good at in a commercial sales setting and where does it fall short?

Mikhail Belov [00:02:22]:

As I said, we are trying to rethink how we do things in sales training and enablement. We've been on the journey for a couple of years now. I remember the very first time we used AI when we get together for an annual meeting and we had a task on hand to analyze more than 5,000 manual handwriting inputs from our sales attendees from the previous year. And this is a very laborious and heavy task and previously it was very hard to accomplish. And it took us just less than 10 minutes to analyze this feedback and get the key insights. And that was almost two years ago now. And that was an eye opening experience. And at that point we said to ourselves, we sat together with the team and said, "What else we can do with AI?" And we identified a few avenues where, you know, we should rethink how we do things on daily basis.

Mikhail Belov [00:03:20]:

One of them was curriculum design, the way we build classes. And it's similar to other organizations as far as we know we, you know, analyze the curriculum gaps, perhaps running some focus groups and collecting feedback from learners. And it's again pretty manual process to analyze those feedbacks and identify training gaps and then we pull the group of SMEs and we start working on agendas. So now with AI you can do it much faster with much more confidence and a better quality. And we see the result of it. It's hard to put the real percentage of improvement in efficiency, but we estimate about 30% improvement in efficiency of curriculum design. We also see from learners feedback that net promoter score for the new classes we develop with AI is visibly higher than our historical classes. So it is not only we develop content faster, it also brings more relevancy and appreciated better by our attendees.

Mikhail Belov [00:04:26]:

Another avenue is content development. In the world of sales, there are some things which are fundamental and then don't change over time, but but other things they need rapid response. We work in the energy industry which is very cyclical, as you know. And we need to adjust what we train our people for according to a cycle. When the market is up, we need to think about renegotiating contracts and price increase. The market is down, we need to negotiate discounts and there is always flavor of the month. And we want to be able to develop and deploy content very fast to address these business needs. Historically to deploy a new class it took us six months.

Mikhail Belov [00:05:11]:

Now with AI, when we talk about full blown training program for a week, we can do it much faster. But when we think about self learning models, half an hour, one hour maybe video based historically again it took you several months to write the script and do the video production and then put it into the training program, maybe do quizzes. Now you can do in a matter of hours something what used to take weeks. So this fast paced content development, this is something that really brings a lot of value to sales operations and training teams. And this is definitely where we as an industry move very fast. And we are just start learning how to do it. And some of the results, they're still pretty mechanical. And this is where we really see a big space for improvement for technology.

Mikhail Belov [00:06:07]:

Now another thing is training gap analysis and delivery planning. In SLB we have several thousand learners and we deliver 200 to 300 classes per year. We have dozens of instructors. So it's a massive training delivery operations. And to manage this AI helps a lot just to understand where the people who are missing this type of class according to their role or their missing skills, when it should be deployed, who should attend, which instructor should fly or learners need to attend a specific location. All that historically was a very, very heavy manual exercise. Now we can do it much faster, much more efficient, and efficiency helps us to save cost. Right.

Mikhail Belov [00:06:56]:

So when we talk about efficiency, we talk about cost per learner. And we managed to reduce it by 30% in the last two years. And this is mainly due to introduction of AI. We improve significantly our attendance because we are now very precise and where we schedule the classes today. One maybe most visible trend is introduction of AI role plays. Almost every week somebody reached me on LinkedIn and asking for a demonstration. And this year we deployed a pilot and results were outstanding. We deployed it in more than 10 classes.

Mikhail Belov [00:07:35]:

We collected feedback from more than 60 attendees and it is 100% Net Promoter Score. It's just amazing how positive the response was. 100% relevance, 100% people gained or improved skills. People really appreciated taking AI role play several times. And they can. 100% of people confirm that every time they do role play, they improve. And what surprised us more than anything else that more than half of people said that they prefer AI role play over real instructor. This is something what we did not expect and this is something that we confirmed later with other industry players and talking to other agencies, et cetera.

Mikhail Belov [00:08:21]:

And this is probably because people feel it's a safe space, they can practice multiple times. And this is really. We see where technology going to develop very fast. And if you haven't tried AI role play, there are multiple suppliers. I'm not going to advocate to any specific one, but this is definitely a technology which emerged very fast. And this should really help to develop proficiency of your people. To close the loop, the analyzing feedback. This is where I started.

Mikhail Belov [00:08:51]:

As I said, after every training, and we deliver several hundred training per year, we collect feedback from attendees. We have more than 5 to 10,000 manual entries, plus all the scores and all the data we collect through this feedback. And to analyze this volume of data and make your curriculum better and help your instructors to improve. We cannot do it without AI today. So this is what we do.

Rob Durant [00:09:18]:

It's interesting that you observed the the role play because I had a conversation with somebody at Forrester back in the summer and they had done some research that concluded the same thing for some of the same reasons that you cited. People prefer AI roleplay because it feels safer. They're not showing their faults to their boss, for example.

Mikhail Belov [00:09:49]:

Absolutely. And I think it's a great opportunity to deploy role plays in training at much bigger scale. We have role plays in almost every class now, but obviously the Time in the class is very limited. There's one or maybe few instructors. But really between the theoretical content and some facilitation and discussions and the role plays, there's not so much time left. So really AI should help a lot for attendees during the class and after the class to practice much more than what we used to do. But what I see is a very important trend is moving AI role plays from sales training space into sales operation space. If we're able to fine tune AI role play very fast to a specific real life situation, then sales teams can practice before going into the customer presentation or a cold call or maybe negotiations.

Mikhail Belov [00:10:52]:

You can quickly build the scenario and get the large language model to make it richer and practice several negotiation scenarios. So that should really help sales teams not only in building new skills, but also driving real business results and helping our customers. We have to keep in mind that customers are in the center. What we're doing in the end, what we're trying to do is to help our customers to find the best and most economical solution.

Rob Durant [00:11:25]:

Exactly. We have a comment from the audience. Scott Shelb says AI based role playing brilliant concept. Will be using AI based tools to learn more. Very funny, Scott. Thank you for speaking up and anyone else in the audience, if you have some questions, we'd love to hear from those as well. Wanted to take the second half of the question. So you've given us some AI technologies that seem to be mature and impactful.

Rob Durant [00:12:00]:

Are there any that you've come across that really just aren't ready for prime time?

Mikhail Belov [00:12:07]:

We are all learning and technology is developing very fast. We have to admit that nothing is ideal. Right. And even in AI role play you really see it's a little bit of mechanical. So I think with the technology development it will really become more and more natural. And what I see and I hope potentially will happen in the near future that we will be able to have a proper, very naturally felt AI coaching. All managers are busy and find the proper coach which will dedicate right time for you is not always easy and it happens here and there, not maybe consistently across big organizations. And potentially I see AI could be ready for it.

Mikhail Belov [00:13:01]:

Not quite yet. So far we're just receiving pretty mechanical feedback which still really helps to build skills. But in future I see us moving into a direction where AI can be almost like a real life coach. That's one direction and if to pick one more thing, maybe not as much in the training space, but in sales operation space, we are still learning and didn't see a breakthrough technology which can help with sales enablement and connecting CRMs and sales strategies. Right. So we are still learning how to connect the two. And you know, there are CRM systems which claim they can improve significantly building sales strategies. And this is definitely where we see more innovation and more maturity coming in the next years.

Rob Durant [00:14:00]:

So let's look forward a little bit. As AI becomes more embedded in commercial excellence, what do you see as remaining distinctly human in the sales process?

Mikhail Belov [00:14:17]:

It's hard to predict the future. But the way it stands now, we all know AI does mistakes. And even in your daily life, you really have to double check and triple check. And you cannot rely entirely on AI. In that sense, we don't see that AI will replace lawyers and doctors and financial advisors in the next few years. In a similar way, AI will not replace human interactions and human element in sales. So AI will help us to improve productivity, AI will help us to improve quality, AI will help us to move faster. But I don't see AI replacing people, at least in the next few years.

Mikhail Belov [00:15:04]:

But again, it's hard to predict future. We'll see how it goes.

Rob Durant [00:15:08]:

Okay, so my job is to say.

Mikhail Belov [00:15:09]:

For a little while, I hope mine too.

Rob Durant [00:15:12]:

Yeah, there we go. So what are the biggest risks or misconceptions about adopting AI in sales?

Mikhail Belov [00:15:24]:

Well, we can talk about several things. There are plenty of memes and you know, on the web, executives want to move fast with AI. But I don't think it makes sense to implement AI for the sake of implementing AI. You really need to think of the practicality of implementing this tool or that tool. And I think you should start with how you operate today as organization and rethink what, what are your, you know, what are your framework and where AI could help. So you start with your tasks and your operating framework and see where AI can help. Just grabbing the tool and throwing into your people, it will, I think create some disturbance to the process and maybe not bring too much value. Another thing is security.

Mikhail Belov [00:16:21]:

You really have to be careful with confidential data and the customer data. So think which tool are you using and for which purpose? And data security obviously have to be on top of our minds every time we use AI.

Rob Durant [00:16:38]:

You've mentioned some metrics that you've used. How can organizations evaluate whether new AI driven sales tools are generally adding value or simply creating noise?

Mikhail Belov [00:16:56]:

It really depends on the business. And in some business context you can measure impact directly, the revenue growth and the quality of revenue profitability. And if we talk about fast paced transactional business, high volume environment with thousands of data points and opportunity development of, you know, a few hours, then perhaps you can measure impact directly. And we have some studies and our partners report that deploying AI role plays, they can measure directly that people who practice more and people who score more in those practices, they actually, you know, they're, they grow their pipeline faster, they close deals faster, they, and basically they deliver better business results. Now when we talk about more complex business environments with opportunity cycle of several years and very complex stakeholder map both on the customer side and on supplier side, where decision is not one person, but again is a group of people on both customer and supplier side, it's not as easy to measure business impact directly. And that's a very right question to ask. How do we evaluate the efficiency of AI deployment? So we see that we are able to deploy content faster. This year we deployed 30% more content than the last year, even though we reduced some of the human resources.

Mikhail Belov [00:18:36]:

And this is a clear proof that, that we're able to move faster. We reduce significantly the cost per learner, again is a result of more efficient scheduling. And this is direct impact on business. We analyze learner feedback and we see that net promoter score from our classes, classes develop with AI and introducing AI role play users appreciate it. And net promoter score from these classes is higher. So definitely you need to apply common sense and gauge yourself whenever. If you're in a managerial role and it is your decision to deploy that tool, you have to understand why you do it. You need to listen to your people and see what they say, talk to SMEs in your organization and gauge what they have to say and implement metrics which make sense for your business.

Mikhail Belov [00:19:27]:

Sometimes, as I said, you can measure the ultimate business impact directly, sometimes not. But there is no doubt there's a huge value in AI if you apply it appropriately for your organization.

Rob Durant [00:19:42]:

Sounds like you've been at this for a while, but there are some organizations out there that still have not deployed AI. What changes do sales and enablement leaders need to make to their enablement and onboarding programs to incorporate AI effectively? What do they need to plan for?

Mikhail Belov [00:20:06]:

There is no one answer for all. It really depends on organizational type, the size of organization, is it local, is it multinational, major, with thousands of people. And also it depends on organizational culture. To make space for innovation is not easy. And some organizations, they have innovation as a part of their DNA and some are really lagging. To deploy innovation across organizations, you need to make space, safe space for people to experiment, learn and grow and space in terms of time and resources for People to try new things. If people are so busy they keep their head down and they don't have time and resources to try new things, they will be lagging. Eventually innovation will happen, but competition will do it faster.

Mikhail Belov [00:21:07]:

So as I said, there is no one answer for all. I think leadership is important. I think leaders need to demonstrate innovative spirit not only in KPO setting, but really applying those new technologies, using them themselves and showing to their troops that they are doing it. And that should be not only for demonstration purposes. They really need to embrace this innovative spirit and then things will happen. If you're in a situation when leaders don't use tools and don't have this innovation innovator spirit themselves and and just try to push it through KPOs, it becomes mechanical and it will not build culture. So I think yeah, it starts with leaders. You need to lead by example, you need to embrace the technology and you need to make space for your people.

Mikhail Belov [00:22:01]:

And of course we need it. You can add KPOs for targeted managers to deploy certain things, but only setting KPOs will not help.

Rob Durant [00:22:13]:

Excellent. I love that make space. Mikael, if you were to emphasize the one thing you would want our audience to take away from today's episode, what would that one thing be?

Mikhail Belov [00:22:28]:

Revisit and rethink everything that you do in your current scope. There are some quick wins and some technologies they're already mature enough like AI. Role plays is just a matter of selecting suppliers. Don't wait, pick a few is enough. You throw the stone, you'll find a few good companies. Just pick the one which suits your organizational framework which you like personally, your SMEs and your people, which relate better. Obviously financial are important and do the trial and deploy.

Mikhail Belov [00:23:03]:

It will definitely improve efficiency. And I haven't seen an organization who who said we tried and we didn't like it. So if you want a quick win, try AI roleplays. But really try to experiment. See how you can improve both in terms of organizational need analysis and learner feedback and training operations and sales training delivery. AI will help you everywhere. So if I say one advice, rethink that you do daily. Challenge yourself, implement AI where possible.

Mikhail Belov [00:23:37]:

And I would say role plays is the most mature technology right now.

Rob Durant [00:23:41]:

Excellent. Mikhail, this has been great. On behalf of everyone here at Sales TV Live to you and to our audience, we want to thank you for being part of today's conversation. And if you liked what you heard today, please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack or YouTube. Let us know what you learned and what you'd like to learn more about. Your feedback helps us reach more people like you and fulfill our mission of elevating the profession of sales. Thank you all and see you next time.

Mikhail Belov [00:24:16]:

Rob, thank you very much for having me.

Rob Durant [00:24:18]:

Our pleasure.

Mikhail Belov [00:24:21]:

Thank you. Bye.

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About SalesTV: SalesTV is a weekly talk show created by salespeople, for salespeople. Each episode explores sales, sales training, sales enablement, and social selling, bringing together sales leaders, enablement professionals, and practitioners from across the globe.

About the Institute of Sales Professionals: The ISP is the only body worldwide dedicated to raising the standards of sales. Its Sales Capability Framework, certifications, and member community are designed to address their one goal: To Elevate the Profession of Sales.