Most sales teams today use forecasting tools, yet the majority of them still struggle to understand what’s actually happening during critical conversations with prospects.
Why? Because forecasting isn’t just calling a number. It’s a set of actions you take before you call a number that help you deliver better results.
That’s where Conversation Intelligence (CI) comes in. An action step in your forecasting process, CI is a Sales Engagement feature that automatically captures all customer interactions and analyzes them so you can stop losing deals and start exceeding quota.
While Conversation Intelligence technology may be the “new kid” on the Sales Engagement block, don’t underestimate its value. With the help of CI, sales managers can coach their teams more effectively, and reps can ramp up and advance in their careers faster than ever before.
What is Conversation Intelligence?
Think of conversation intelligence as sophisticated call recording. CI lets you record conversations and review them later (at the speed of your choice), putting you in control of your schedule.
Rather than just listen to your recordings, CI technology transcribes and analyzes audio so you can read conversations. Combined with Sales Engagement – which tracks and analyzes all written communication (texts, emails, direct messages) – you can get the full picture of every single interaction.
CI also shows you who each speaker was and how much time they spent talking. This gives you a digestible view of the conversation, allowing you to pause, fast forward, rewind, and make notes as you go.
For example, CI pinpoints words that might stall a deal (for instance, mentioning a competitor!) It also analyzes “speaker sentiment,” or the tones and emotions of each speaker. By combining all of these insights, you can approach your sales pipeline with more clarity.
Using AI to Make Sales Coaching Easier
We know “productivity” is a buzzword in the software and technology space, but seriously—how much more successful would your salespeople be if they could focus on the sale without the burden of these administrative tasks?
CI uses AI technology to automatically capture and analyze customer pain points, objections, feedback, and competitive intel—without you having to lift a finger.
CI within your Sales Engagement platform also automates note-taking, which means you no longer have to type notes in your CRM and then ensure that every member of the team stays in the loop.
Here’s how each member of your revenue team benefits from AI-driven conversation intelligence:
Sales Managers:
Ditch the overwhelming feeling of having to be ‘on’ every sales call. With playback capabilities, you can be a fly on the wall during each reps’ sales conversation and provide the necessary coaching—all on your own time.
Sales Reps:
Being expected to learn a new product – and becoming an expert simultaneously – makes ramp-up time for new reps extra stressful. With CI, reps can listen to top performers and learn best practices early-on, making ramp time faster.
The best part? Onboarding reps becomes less time-consuming, so you can finally focus on providing strategic, tailored coaching that will help your team close more deals.
How Do Sales Teams Use Conversation Intelligence?
Forecasting is a crucial skill for sales leaders. But to do it accurately, you need a thorough understanding of your sales reps’ activities and progress.
Here’s how CI dives deep into rep activities, and a few examples of the ways that the technology helps them do more of the right things.
Help Reps Close More Deals
Let’s say you’re a sales leader who wants to finish the quarter strong. You see your pipeline and notice that your rep, Kelly, is struggling to move her deals from negotiation to closed/won.
You know that a few deals can make or break the quarter, so you want to pinpoint what’s going wrong in Kelly’s process. First, you notice that she hasn’t had enough touchpoints with the account during the negotiation phase.
You decide to listen to Kelly’s recorded conversation with the CFO of the account. You use the CI feature within your Sales Engagement platform to see how many conversations she’s had with the account and the length of those conversations.
Then, you take a closer look at the calls that happened during the negotiation phase. You bookmark the mentions of your competitor and use the tool to analyze what tone they used when mentioning them. In a matter of minutes, you can gather in-depth information from your reps’ conversations to see where they’re struggling and whether or not the deal is likely to close.
With more confidence to detect where your reps’ may be struggling, you can coach your team to move deals from negotiation to closed/won.
Review Sales Calls in Bulk
Imagine that you’ve completed your 1:1’s with your reps, and all of a sudden notice a pattern: they’re losing deals to the competition.
Instead of taking these anecdotes at face value, you want to dig deeper. You’re wondering if your rival actually has a competitive advantage, or if the issue could be something your reps are saying during calls.
Using CI, you can scan all call transcripts in the negotiation stage who mention your competitor. Then, quickly navigate to the moment where your competitors are mentioned in the transcript and review their responses. You even have the option to speed things up using playback speed options.
To stay on top of the situation in the coming months, you can easily set reminders to send emails (Conversation Highlights) to your inbox every time a sales call mentions the competition in the negotiation phase.
Diligence and follow-through have never been easier!
The Bottom Line
CI is at the root of coaching teams more effectively and helping reps advance in their careers faster than ever before.
A Sales Engagement platform that uses CI captures all customer interactions and analyzes them so you can have digestible insights that identify the most engaged prospects and supercharge your revenue efforts. Using CI, you can empower your sellers to prospect, manage opportunities, and continue to engage post-sale more efficiently than ever before.