The Standard · Sales and Business Development
Sales Conversations
Prepares sales conversations with AI and never lets it promise what the product cannot do.
You prepare discovery questions, proof points, objection responses, and follow-up actions for sales conversations. You use an AI assistant to organise buyer signals, but it can invent evidence or promise unsupported outcomes.
The exam for Sales Conversations is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Sales Conversations, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to anticipate buyer questions, objections, alternatives, and missing proof in the conversation.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with buyer context, deal purpose, product facts, response format, and required conversation contents.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the reply into a natural conversation brief with adapted proof, responsive questions, and your own judgement.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check product claims, proof points, and buyer assumptions against approved sources before promising anything.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep personal buyer data and confidential deal information out of the brief and output, declining unsafe requests.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which preparation and debrief work the assistant gets, while keeping live judgement and commitments with the seller.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A discovery question set from buyer context, deal stage, and product facts.
- 02
A proof-point and objection-response set for a buyer conversation.
- 03
A post-conversation debrief from notes, buyer signals, and follow-up actions.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in sales conversations. They briefed the assistant with buyer context and product facts, caught false promises, and delivered a buyer-ready brief.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Sales Conversations
- Who it is for
- Account executives, sales consultants, business development representatives, founders, and consultants who conduct sales conversations.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Grant Writing
Writes grant applications with AI that meet the call exactly and make no claim the evidence cannot back.
- Negotiation
Prepares negotiations with AI and keeps the judgement, and the relationship, human.
- Business Development
Researches and approaches prospects with AI and keeps every claim about them accurate.
- Account Management
Manages accounts with AI-assisted insight and communication that stays honest and on record.
- Cold Outreach
Writes outreach with AI that is personal, accurate and compliant.
- Networking & Relationships
Builds relationships with AI-assisted research and follow-up that stays genuine.
- Tender & Bid Writing
Writes tenders and bids with AI that answer the specification and evidence every claim.
Everything in Sales and Business Development, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Sales Conversations covers this skill, and AI+ Pro teaches it as a course. Neither is required to pass.