Sales practice

Seller and sales manager

Practice the hard part of a conversation before the buyer hears it. Your AI assistant or the desk’s Practice page plays the buyer and a coach. Local Media Desk builds the scenario from the account's own plan and keeps a short debrief of each session.

This is rehearsal, not evaluation. Nothing gives a seller a score, grade or rank, and the team view shows themes, never people.

Start with the account you want to practice. Use its Practice tab in the desk, or confirm your AI assistant’s connection to that workspace for rehearsal and recorded-call review.

What you need

• For the desk: a signed-in workspace and an account. For voice, a microphone, browser permission and voice enabled for your workspace. Text is available when your workspace’s AI provider is configured.
• For a connected assistant: a connection with the practice tools granted. Open Settings → Connected agents in Local Media Desk to manage your connection. Ask your administrator to grant the practice tools if they are missing. Administrators can use Connect an AI agent for setup instructions (documentation sign-in and administrator access required).
• Permission to view account data to read scenarios and team themes.
• Permission to edit account data to save a debrief.
• An account. If the account has a completed plan, the rehearsal uses that plan. Without one, the rehearsal is a discovery conversation.

Practice in the desk

1. Open Accounts, select the account, then open its Practice tab.
2. Choose the Situation and Buyer role. Read the offer and what you do not know yet. Without a ready plan option, ask discovery questions.
3. Choose Start voice, allow your microphone if prompted, and speak first. Your microphone audio goes to the AI voice provider. Or type your opening in Type your line and choose Send. Enter sends; Shift+Enter adds a line.
4. Ask for Coach me, Try again, or Next objection. Say these during voice practice; use the buttons during text practice.
5. Choose End & save debrief after you have spoken and received a reply. It ends voice if needed and saves Rehearsed, Improved, and Next, with a line to try. Choose Practice again below the note to rehearse the next line or choose another situation. If saving fails, keep the page open and choose Retry.

Voice limits. One voice session can run at a time, for up to 20 minutes. Voice and typed practice use your workspace’s AI budget. The page explains when a usage limit is reached.

Switch to text. While microphone permission is pending, choose Cancel voice & use text. During a voice session, choose End voice, then Continue in text. Your earlier conversation stays in the same rehearsal. If voice disconnects after you have started talking, you can continue the same way. The page shows the exact deadline to save, including when you continue in text: 15 minutes after the scheduled voice end. Once it passes, new typed turns are disabled. Download the transcript to your device before starting a new rehearsal. You can still retry a previous save to retrieve it if it already finished; an expired session cannot generate a new debrief.

Keep your place. New replies follow automatically while you are at the end of the conversation. Scroll up to review earlier lines; Show latest replies returns you to the latest response.

Start again or leave. Start over clears the conversation and lets you change the situation or buyer role. The transcript is only on the current page; leaving or reloading loses it. Save a debrief first if you want to keep the coaching note. Start over and same-tab links ask before discarding unsaved work; browser reloads and closes also show a warning. Saving keeps selected quotes, not the whole transcript. Members who can view workspace data can read saved debriefs. You and members who can edit workspace data can also see who ran them in the activity history.

If voice or text is unavailable, the page states why. For a blocked microphone, allow this site in your browser’s site settings, then retry, or use text practice. For missing access or an exhausted AI budget, ask a workspace administrator. Members who can read but not write see the scenario and disabled controls with an access explanation. They cannot run or save practice.

Practice in a connected assistant

1. Ask your assistant to practice a conversation with the account, or start the practice_session prompt if your assistant lists MCP prompts. Name a situation if you want one:

   • curious: the buyer has time but has not said they need anything.
   • incumbent: the buyer already has a solution that works well enough.
   • capacity: the buyer cannot take on anything new right now.
   • route: the buyer does not make the final decision.
   • no fit: the plan does not meet a current need, and that stays true.

   You can also name the buyer's role: owner, marketing lead, general manager, operations lead, or regional or franchise marketing lead.

2. The assistant prepares the scenario. The buyer raises the first of three objections built from the account's own products and budget, then waits for your answer.

3. After each answer the coach gives one thing that worked, one thing that was missed, and one stronger line to try. Say try again to answer the same objection again, next objection to move on, or coach me for coaching on demand.

4. Say wrap up. The assistant reviews your rehearsal and shows you the note: Rehearsed, Improved, Next.

What the buyer will and will not do

• The buyer is a business role, not a portrait of a real person. It has no invented motives or personal traits.
• Anything the plan does not establish stays unknown: audience size, delivery, results, availability and final pricing. The buyer says it would need to check rather than accept a number you made up.
• Pushing harder does not change the situation. A respectful no, or a deferral, is a good ending.

What is kept

Local Media Desk keeps the debrief: what worked and what was missed (each quoting your own words), the reframe, the three-line note, the objection themes and the skill to work on next. It does not keep the transcript. A quote it cannot find in your own lines is dropped, and a debrief that grades you is discarded rather than saved.

Debriefs are not anonymous. Members who can view workspace data can read the debriefs and their selected quotes. Saved quotes can include names you say aloud. You and members who can edit workspace data can also see who ran each practice session or recorded-call review in the activity history. Nothing scores, grades or ranks you.

Review a recorded call

The same coaching works on a real call. Give your assistant the transcript of a recorded call with an account and ask for a coaching review:

1. Name the account and the plan you discussed, if there was one.
2. Say where the call was recorded: Built Revenue Agent capture, or a recorder such as Fathom. The recorder is responsible for the participants' consent to record; your assistant states that it has it. Local Media Desk does not record calls or ask for consent itself.
3. Say which speaker is you (seller) and which is the prospect (buyer). Remove private details unrelated to coaching before submitting. Anyone you leave out, such as a notetaker, is context only and is never reviewed as the seller.
4. List the names that may come up, with the speaker each person spoke as, plus anyone only mentioned. They are replaced before the call is reviewed.

You get the same note as a practice session: Rehearsed (the objections the buyer raised and how you answered), Improved, and Next. Local Media Desk replaces the participant names you supplied with role tags such as Seller A and Buyer A, or [name]. It drops quotes it detects as containing other personal names. Automated replacement does not guarantee anonymization: unlisted, lowercase or sentence-initial names can remain. Remove other personal names before submitting, and review the debrief before sharing it. The transcript is not kept.

How long a call can be. Up to 40,000 characters, roughly 45 minutes of conversation. Lines one person says in a row count as one turn, and up to 300 turns are kept. For a longer call, cut the small talk, scheduling and recorder notices and keep the part where you discussed the account's needs and objections.

Where the call goes. Like a practice debrief, the call (with names replaced) is sent to the AI provider your workspace uses to write the review. Nothing else receives it.

See where the team practices

When you save a debrief on an account's Practice tab, the page shows the workspace's practice themes from the last 90 days, with the debrief you just saved counted: the most common objections and the skills debriefs said to work on next, each with a count of debriefs.

For more detail, ask your connected assistant for team practice themes from the last 90 days. You can include the whole workspace or one account, and practice sessions, recorded calls, or both. The summary shows common objections, skills to work on, and examples of lines to practice. It counts sessions without listing people or comparing sellers.

If something goes wrong

• "This scenario has changed since it was read": the account's plan changed between the rehearsal and the debrief. Build a new scenario and practice it.
• The debrief is unavailable: no AI provider answered, or its answer was discarded. Say wrap up again; a debrief already saved for the same transcript is returned rather than written twice.
• The tools are missing: your connection does not have access to them. Ask a Local Media Desk administrator.