Richardson introduces AI Roleplay Built on Hyperbound to strengthen seller readiness. Sep 01, 2026, 09:00 ET PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 1, 2026 /CNW/ - Richardson Sales Performance, a global leader in sales training and performance improvement, today announced AI Roleplay Built on Hyperbound in Accelerate Prism, giving sellers realistic, AI-powered opportunities to practice critical sales conversations and strengthen readiness before putting new skills to the test with customers. Sales organizations invest heavily in building seller capability, but sellers often have too few opportunities to apply new skills before they are expected to use them in high-stakes customer conversations. AI Roleplay addresses this gap by bringing realistic, real-time practice directly into the Accelerate Prism learning journey, helping sellers build confidence, sharpen execution, and turn newly learned skills into repeatable behaviors. Enablement teams can quickly customize scenarios around their organization's buyers, offerings, and common sales challenges, then deploy relevant practice consistently across roles, regions, and teams. Sellers can rehearse conversations in a realistic environment and receive immediate, actionable feedback grounded in Richardson's Consultative Selling and Challenger methodologies, connecting every practice experience to the behaviors required for stronger customer conversations. "Knowing what to do and being ready to do it in a customer conversation are two very different things," said Kate Lewis, Chief Product Officer of Richardson. "AI Roleplay gives sellers a place to practice, make adjustments, and build confidence before the stakes are real. By embedding that practice within Accelerate Prism, organizations can create a much stronger connection between what sellers learn and how they ultimately perform with customers." AI Roleplay sits within the broader Accelerate Prism learning journey, so practice does not happen in isolation. Each experience reinforces the skills and behaviors introduced through customized learning and gives sellers repeated opportunities to apply them in situations that reflect the conversations they face in the field. Practice becomes part of an ongoing cycle of learning, application, feedback, and coaching designed to build durable behavior change. AI Roleplay is powered by Hyperbound's leading AI technology and integrated with Richardson's methodology, learning experiences, and performance approach. This combination gives organizations the flexibility to create realistic practice environments while maintaining a consistent standard for how effective selling behaviors are reinforced and evaluated. "Practice is one of the most important and historically hardest to scale elements of building sales capability and effectiveness," said Erin Smith, Chief Revenue Officer of Richardson. "By bringing AI-powered roleplay into Accelerate Prism, we can give every seller more opportunities to practice the conversations that matter, receive feedback tied to proven selling behaviors, and arrive at the customer conversation better prepared to execute." For enablement leaders, AI Roleplay provides a scalable way to reinforce priority behaviors across the organization without relying solely on instructor-led practice or manager availability. Teams can tailor scenarios to specific business priorities and seller needs, while managers gain greater clarity into where sellers need additional coaching and reinforcement. Within Accelerate Prism, those practice experiences can also become part of a more personalized development journey. By connecting realistic AI-powered practice with targeted learning and coaching, organizations can address individual skill gaps, reinforce the behaviors most important to performance, and help managers focus coaching where it can have the greatest impact. This provides a more scalable approach to seller readiness-one designed to reduce the risk that capability gaps surface for the first time in critical customer interactions and undermine execution, customer trust, pipeline progression, and revenue performance. About Richardson Richardson is a global sales training and performance improvement company that helps organizations build confident sales teams and win more business in an increasingly complex buying environment. As buying groups expand, decision-making slows, and AI reshapes how sales teams work, Richardson helps sellers combine consultative skills, disruptive insights, and disciplined execution to move deals forward. Through proven methodologies, expert facilitation, customized learning, AI-enabled reinforcement, and performance analytics, Richardson helps organizations develop the behaviors that improve customer conversations, strengthen pipeline progression, and drive measurable revenue outcomes. The world's leading sales organizations rely on Richardson to build sales teams that compel buyers to act. SOURCE Richardson Sales Performance

Hyperbound has raised a $15M Series A led by Peak XV Partners with participation from Y Combinator, Snowflake Ventures, Roble Ventures, and Fellows Fund. The AI sales training platform - used by Autodesk, Monday.com, Bloomberg, G2, Vanta, Airwallex, and Hub International - is redefining sales coaching with AI roleplays, real call scoring, and custom scorecards.