May 25, 2021
Organizations with a dedicated sales enablement program increase average quota attainment between 45% to over 52%. Sales readiness and enablement are now an essential part of the sales ecosystem, influencing selling skills before, during and after buyer interactions to accelerate win rates and optimize the sales cycle as a whole.
Effective coaching is probably the single most powerful contribution sales leaders can make to their team’s success. And yet most managers have not been formally trained to coach, don’t dedicate enough time to it, or don’t have the necessary supporting tools to do it well. With the volume of calls and interactions happening during a typical sales cycle, it is critical to invest in conversation intelligence and call recording solutions. These tools provide unparalleled access to what’s being discussed during deals, and accelerate the manager’s ability to diagnose potential issues and coach through them effectively.
Conversation intelligence has become an invaluable component of the sales readiness strategy, giving visibility into a deal’s entire lifecycle. With the insights uncovered from every sales call, sales leaders can identify trends, evaluate sellers’ performance, pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, and develop targeted coaching techniques to improve outcomes.
Seven reasons why investing in conversation intelligence software should be a priority
- Understand the “why” behind lost deals
It’s critical to know why a buyer chose another solution or a deal went dark. Was the rep inadequately prepared? Did they use outdated messaging? Did they demonstrate subpar presentation or negotiation skills? Were they unable to sufficiently answer buyer questions or objections because they lacked product knowledge or competitive intelligence? The possibilities behind the “why” are endless. Sales managers need these answers to understand what went wrong and how they can help sellers avoid making the same mistakes in future deals.
- Identify gaps and weaknesses in each seller’s skillset
From the get-go, conversation intelligence can help sales managers highlight skill gaps for both individual team members and the group in general. Analyzing snippets of crucial conversations can help managers provide their team members and the organization proof of what works, what areas need remediation, and where enablement can have a great impact.
- Replicate the success of top-performing reps across your team
Sales reps love a winning, repeatable formula for success. Using conversation intelligence, you can easily understand what separates the best from the rest, getting detailed analytics about your team’s calls that help you identify and encourage winning sales behaviors. Providing sellers with real snippets of how successful reps handled similar situations can become great teaching opportunities.
- Onboard new sellers faster
Instead of making new hires shadow an experienced rep, managers can save and share the best examples of real-world cold calls, objection handling and other best practices in easily accessible call libraries. New sales hires can listen to the recordings to pick up on best practices, learn from the mistakes of others, and see firsthand how prospects interact with salespeople.
- “Coach the coach” based on data that shows the greatest areas of need
While a conversation intelligence platform helps managers pinpoint coaching opportunities to improve individual outcomes, readiness and sales leadership can also pair conversation intelligence data with readiness programs to provide individualized guidance about the greatest areas of need for each salesperson – giving managers a blueprint to coach more effectively.
- Develop a personalized enablement program using data-driven insights
Sales enablement teams can use trends and gaps identified from conversation recordings to create a training and readiness calendar. As an example, analyzing call recordings can show reps foundering on competitive talk tracks or confusing prospects with their explanation of the pricing model. These can be two topics for the enablement and readiness team to add to an upcoming training calendar.
- Improve your go-to-market strategy
Analyzing call recordings can reveal actionable insights that extend across the organization. Sales managers can share snippets of recordings and statistics with marketing, giving the team direct insight into the voice of the buyer to help inform priorities, campaigns, messaging and future investments. Listening to calls can show sales enablement and product marketing how prospects respond to talk tracks and sales collateral, giving them visibility into how they could improve messaging or training to better align with the prospect’s needs.
Using conversation intelligence to close the loop
Conversation intelligence gives managers the tools and information they need to optimize sellers’ performance in the short term and the future.
Managers can analyze key interactions to gauge the progress of deals, uncover buyer sentiments, and determine appropriate next steps to build or maintain momentum within individual sales cycles.
Using AI-based call scoring, managers can compare individualized strengths and weaknesses against best practices. Managers can use conversation snippets to highlight demonstrated skills vs. areas for improvement and then automatically prescribe coaching, training and practice–focused on areas of need.
Conversation intelligence gives managers direct insight into the buyer experience and point of view so they can analyze responses to sales and marketing programs, informing new iterations with data-backed evidence.
A truly successful enablement program will close the loop, powering a continuous cycle of analysis, skill development, coaching and assessment to drive ongoing sales excellence. Conversation intelligence solutions power this continuous loop, delivering benefits across the organization:
- Salespeople can correct mistakes, increasing productivity and positive business outcomes
- Managers have significant visibility into how salespeople perform during live interactions
- Deals are won against more poorly prepared competitors
- Deal sizes increase as salespeople are able to more effectively capitalize on every opportunity
- Best practices are easy to identify, share and replicate
- More people make or exceed quota, decreasing churn and improving performance against revenue targets
- Up-to-date messaging helps sales teams improve deal outcomes
- Key business initiatives succeed because they’re informed by critical field-based evidence
Using a conversation intelligence solution like Call AI empowers your sales team with actionable insights into why deals are won or lost and how to better prepare sellers and teams to succeed. Learn more about conversation intelligence and Call AI.
