For B2B sales teams, meeting customers’ needs and expectations has become more challenging than ever — and also more important.
And it’s not just expectations that are growing. Tech stacks are too.
According to research, 80% of B2B buyers expect the same buying experience as B2C customers. Meanwhile, the average number of SaaS tools used by companies has increased by 1,275% since 2015.
However, those needs and expectations have become increasingly complicated, including personalized service, empathetic listening, consistency and connection across business departments, and more.
To meet these market demands and support revenue goals, companies must have deep insight into the front-line conversations their sales teams are having, as well as their team’s level of sales productivity.
Fortunately, you can have complete visibility into these conversations with AI-powered conversation intelligence platforms. In this article, we’ll give you a quick rundown of how these tools can boost your sales performance and how to choose the best conversation intelligence solution for your business.
What is a conversation intelligence platform?
The conversation intelligence platform is quickly becoming the cornerstone of the sales tech stack for companies who recognize the old methods are no longer sufficient. These systems use artificial intelligence and machine learning to gather and analyze sales conversation data from calls and emails; accurately measure customer sentiment; and compile insights for improved sales performance.
In fact, studies have shown conversation intelligence can drive at least a 64% increase in revenue generated by reps in their first quarter and a 50% average reduction in ramp-up time for new hires.
Conversation intelligence technology provides unparalleled insight into conversations with potential customers. It enables more accurate deal health assessment and forecasting by objectively tracking deal risk indicators across 100% of your sales pipeline interactions.
This data also gives managers and reps a single system of record to elevate rep performance during customer interactions, incorporating:
- Call recordings
- Call scoring and analytics
- Customer sentiment analysis
- In-line coaching
- Best practices
This visibility is key to identifying opportunities to improve sellers’ skill sets while also helping you understand the tactics top performers are using, so you can ensure salespeople are equipped with the skills and best practices they need to win more deals.
Conversation intelligence helps managers create coaching blueprints to provide the right training and support for salespeople. It also supports faster and more effective hiring and onboarding of new team members.
Common conversation intelligence use cases
Conversation intelligence software works across multiple channels, improving performance and motivation throughout the organization, from sales reps to sales leadership. It enables companies to:
- Help sales reps actively listen instead of note-take and share calls across the organization to facilitate better hand-offs
- Improve conversion rates throughout each stage of the sales process by providing data on what interactions drive deals forward (or not!)
- Help customer-facing roles improve the sales experience
- Make it easier for managers to support and coach sales reps
- Assist leaders in developing effective product and marketing strategies that drive revenue and growth
Today, two-thirds of companies feel their enablement programs fall short. For front-line sales managers, conversation intelligence platforms help them know when to have one-on-one training sessions and how to coach their salespeople in a more relevant and effective manner.
The platform’s sentiment analysis capabilities empower you to keep deals advancing through the sales process or proactively address deal risks while improving metrics like close rates and deal value.
These same capabilities can also help customer success managers improve Net Revenue Retention (NRR) as well as tailor their coaching to reps’ true needs.
For revenue leaders, conversation intelligence means improved deal intelligence — providing complete real-time visibility into the health and status of your accounts’ deals. It also empowers more accurate sales forecasting, helping leaders and teams plan, budget, hire, and allocate resources more effectively.
Lastly, conversation intelligence gives product managers easy access to user feedback so they can make data-informed decisions about product features and priorities.
How can a conversation intelligence platform help you grow your business?
No matter how knowledgeable and experienced a leader is, making effective decisions and driving growth can be challenging without the necessary data and insights. Unfortunately, these are often lacking, which weakens results across organizations.
Sales leaders often have limited visibility into how customers feel about new products and services. As a result, they struggle to pinpoint blockers that reduce productivity.
Revenue teams lack a macro view of how every program and person in the sales organization is performing. They also struggle to track customer interactions, making it difficult to align efforts across teams and develop accurate forecasts.
Enablement leaders have difficulty demonstrating examples of winning behaviors in their training programs or measuring the impact of their efforts on business outcomes.
Conversation intelligence provides the insight you need to overcome these challenges and drive growth by providing 100% visibility into calls.
This helps you improve the customer experience both during the sales process and in the successful adoption of your solutions after the deal is closed.
For sellers, productivity improves because they have access to a unified platform where they can find everything they need, including the transcript and a list of action items or next steps, as well as get immediate feedback after their calls.
And for your go-to-market strategy, conversational intelligence offers individualized, high-value analytics and reporting, insight into the voice of the customer, sentiment analysis, and suggestions to improve messaging to align with the customers’ needs.
5 tips to choose a platform for your business
When evaluating conversation intelligence software solutions, you should start by considering the criteria listed below. But there’s more than just these five tips – It’s important to dig deep to find a platform that works for you and your business. Here are our top five things to consider when choosing the best conversation intelligence platform for you.
Nearly every function at your company can benefit from and use conversation intelligence — from sales leadership to product, marketing, managers, reps, enablement, and operations. Look for a solution that makes it easy for each type of user to find the calls they need and specific moments within them without thinking.
As you’re looking for a solution, keep in mind everything your team has on its plate: seller coaching, call reviews, giving feedback, keeping tabs on pipeline performance, and making accurate forecasts. For all of these tasks, conversation intelligence does the heavy lifting.
Conversation intelligence provides powerful insights into key deals and accounts. But building a business deal by deal won’t scale. Instead, look for a solution that helps you uncover the ideal competencies that lead your top reps to crush quota and achieve sales outcomes. We call those “winning behaviors,” and we use data from real conversations to model them out.
One key to successfully implementing a new software solution is to choose a platform that adapts to your team members’ workflow rather than making them adapt to it. Finding the right fit will make collaboration between departments easier, visibility more targeted, and teams more organized and productive
To avoid unnecessary legal issues, reputation damage, or hefty fines, you need to make sure your conversation intelligence platform is secure and compliant. This allows you to safely and consistently offer top service.
Why choose Mindtickle?
Mindtickle is already recognized as the leading sales readiness platform. It also provides the conversation intelligence you need to support sales, customer success, and revenue growth.
Call AI, Mindtickle’s conversation intelligence solution is integrated with our revenue productivity platform, providing a single place for training, content, and coaching. This helps revenue teams engage the market with purpose and close deals with confidence.
Why build a complicated tech stack when you can use just one platform for your sales and revenue needs?
Mindtickle gives you one source of truth for sales enablement and training, sales content management, conversation intelligence, sales coaching, and analytics — unifying your approach to productivity.
Conversation Intelligence in Mindtickle
Ready to see how Mindtickle’s conversation intelligence platform can give you complete visibility into real-world interactions with customers across your organization?
Request a DemoThis post was originally published in January 2023 and was updated in January 2024.
By Poornima Mohandas
By Vivian Batman