Put AI to Work Training Your Team Members

Giselle Crout, chief operating officer at Corvus Wealth Advisors in San Luis Obispo, CA, discovered an ally when she sought help developing a training program for new advisors: artificial intelligence. After attending a Horsesmouth AI training presentation, Crout used AI to create a training program that prepares advisors new to her firm to handle introductory client calls.

From testing to training

What began as a test of trying out artificial intelligence tools quickly turned into a training program that empowers new advisors.

Giselle had for some time wanted to create a training program to prepare new members of her team for handling introductory calls from prospects and new clients. Her firm has traditionally followed a practice in which one of the two founding partners would participate in every introductory call. That has proved time-consuming, sometimes difficult to schedule, and takes partners away from other important tasks.

Giselle wanted to put more of that responsibility with newer team members. But she found it difficult to make the time to create the training program.

Then she attended a Horsemouth AI training session. After the session in August, she initially had modest expectations and used AI simply to revise text.

Giselle: “I dabbled, completely just dabbled [with AI] before, with rewriting things. And I expected it to be very helpful for that type of thing, rewriting something. … But what really blew my mind was the way we could use it as a thought partner with some of our younger advisors as we’re training them. So, what I thought would actually be a really good introduction for our team and kind of a pilot to roll it out was coming up with a training plan to train some of our younger advisors on how to take initial introductory calls.”

Creating the training program

Giselle said the firm’s partners have standard discussion points that they cover in introductory calls, describing what the firm does for clients. If junior advisors could confidently handle the calls, it would free up the two partners for other work.

Giselle: “So, the idea is to train our younger team to confidently and competently handle those in a way that we feel comfortable letting them do that as they go to build their own book of business. What we ended up doing was designing what we call kind of almost a one-pager on what we felt like was the ideal intro call structure, or the things that we felt like we needed to cover—ideas, concepts. And so, we worked on that, the three of us together. I fed that into the AI model, asked it to summarize it so I made sure that it could really understand what we were doing. And then I also leaned on the AI model to come up with a training program for my team.”

Giselle started by using the Role, Task, Format framework of writing AI prompts to develop a series of prompts that could be used to help train her associate advisors. She then sat with her most senior associate advisor who expressed skepticism about the process.

Giselle: “So she was thinking, ‘What do I need this for? I’ve done this, I’m OK.’ And I was like, ‘Just bear with me.’ And she did go through the process. It was fascinating watching her mind kind of get blown as it was going back and forth. And she was feeding prompts into the model. It was asking her questions back. … The questions it asked her made her start to think through the things exactly that I wanted her to think through. So, it was pretty fantastic actually.”

Giselle explained to her staffer that the process is not intended to develop a strict script, but to impart the concepts and ideas to cover during the calls.

Giselle told her: “‘You’re going to have these concepts, you’re going to have this language in your back pocket. And then we’re going to move into the second piece.’ That is where they’re going to do some mock calls. We’re going to record it on Zoom. We’re going to feed that transcript back into the AI model, ask for feedback, and then we’ll go forth with the next one, which is live ones and do the same thing. So, I’m really excited about this for the team.”

AI gave a jump on the project

When starting out on developing the training program, Giselle simply asked AI to kickstart the project.

Giselle: “I was like, OK, I need to come up with an AI training guide and rollout for the whole team. And so I asked the AI model to build that for me too, and it did. You have to be the human in the room, and you have to have some concepts of what you want. But I think it’s been pretty revolutionary in a pretty short time and terms of coming up with some really great training tools as we grow our younger team, for them to really be able to lean on that in a much bigger way than I originally thought.”

By combining human expertise with AI capabilities, firms can create efficient and effective training programs that prepare new advisors, while preserving the high-touch client experience that distinguishes successful practices.

For firms grappling with management of senior advisors’ time, succession planning, and sustainable growth, this approach offers a promising path forward. The innovation lies not just in using AI as a tool, but in reimagining how to develop staff talent.

Implementation tips

For firms considering similar programs, Giselle’s experience suggests several key implementation steps:

1. Start with clear documentation
   • Document your current intro call process in detail
   • Identify key talking points and successful approaches
   • Create a template for ideal client interactions
2. Maintain human oversight
   • Use AI as a tool, not a replacement for human judgment
   • Keep experienced advisors involved in the training process
   • Regularly review and adjust the program
3. Focus on authentic communication
   • Help advisors develop their own voice
   • Use AI to practice different approaches
   • Encourage personal connection with clients
4. Build in feedback mechanisms
   • Record practice sessions
   • Use AI to analyze conversations
   • Provide structured feedback for improvement