May 24, 2021
When a deal is lost or goes cold, sales leaders often have no visibility into what went wrong. On top of that, sellers often can’t explain why deals don’t work out, which gives sales managers even less insight into how they can help improve rep performance. It’s critical to know the “why” behind the customer’s decision. Did sellers fail to articulate the value of your solution? Did the messaging miss the mark? Was another vendor’s pricing more competitive? Did the seller lack the competitive intelligence to adequately address the customer’s questions or objections?
Not understanding the wants, needs, concerns and expectations of buyers, and lacking insight into the customer experience during sales calls, can have dire consequences to your business:
- Deals are lost to better-prepared competitors
- Key business initiatives – competitive and market strategies, sales methodologies, etc. – fail too frequently
- Best practices are difficult to identify, share or replicate
- Outdated messaging affects deal outcomes
- Fewer reps make quota
- Churn increases
- Your company misses revenue targets
Call recordings reveal the “why” behind customer decisions
Using conversation intelligence and call recording tools, sales organizations can automatically capture and transcribe live sales conversations to reveal the “why” behind wins and losses. Your sales managers get access to invaluable insights about your customers and their interactions with your sales teams so you can better understand:
- How customers perceive your brand
- What they think about your solution and its value
- How they view the competition
- What objections they have
- Why a deal may be in jeopardy
- What more they expect from your company
AI-driven analysis of sales call recordings can reveal a seller’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as trends such as the talk-to-listen ratio, the frequency of objections or how often customers mention a specific competitor across all calls. Your sales managers can identify areas for improvement by digging into high points or shortcomings during conversations. They can understand the topics and themes discussed and the overall impact of the interaction.
Then, using these data-driven insights, your managers can diagnose conversations, identify personalized sales coaching opportunities, implement best practices across your teams, and ensure sales methodologies and training align with the needs and expectations of the buyers in your market.
How to create a customer feedback loop to improve your go-to-market strategy
Analyzing call recordings can deliver actionable insights that extend across the organization. To ensure ongoing alignment and to optimize your organization’s go-to-market strategy, you can use call recordings to establish a strong feedback loop across sales, customer success and marketing.
Managers and sellers: Most sellers want feedback on their performance but are hesitant to ask for it. On top of that, most feedback from sales managers is anecdotal and not based on any objective assessment. An effective feedback loop incorporates insights from call recordings and enables managers to identify and close gaps in knowledge and skills. Managers can provide direct feedback to individual sellers by commenting on specific recording snippets – offering critiques, comments or advice. Using insights gleaned from call recordings, managers can recommend or request specific coaching and training opportunities to address competency or skill gaps and then continue to analyze future customer calls to gauge performance improvements.
Managers and sales teams: The majority of sellers want to know your top rep’s secret sauce. They’re seeking inspiration and guidance on creative ways to position and address questions. Using call recordings, managers can share best practices from key snippets to motivate sellers and inform ongoing training. For example, during onboarding, new hires can review recordings and snippets from the best sales conversations and then practice through role-play so managers or other team members can offer qualitative and quantitative feedback submitted by new sales reps.
Sales and customer success: Call recordings can ensure nothing gets lost in translation between sellers and customer success teams. Sellers can share account history, information and updates to execute a seamless handoff. Customer success teams can share recordings, snippets and information with sellers if they identify new issues or opportunities within an account.
Sales and marketing: Call recordings give marketing direct insight into the voice of the customer, providing an insider’s view of buyer pain points and challenges. Marketing teams can team create, campaigns and messaging and that speak directly to customer needs. Call recordings may uncover that current positioning is not resonating with customers or differentiated enough from the competition.
Customers are telling you what they think; you just need to listen
Some leaders might be unsure about call recordings because they don’t want to come across as intrusive. The value of analyzing call recordings isn’t to spy on buyers or sellers, but to reveal direct, actionable insights into the buyers in your market – their wants, needs, perceptions and objections.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the most successful reps have a growth mindset. They don’t let embarrassment or insecurity get in the way of their professional growth. Call recordings help identify sellers’ strengths and weaknesses so managers can give them advice, feedback, training and tools to help them be more successful.
Call recordings help pinpoint what’s working and what’s not, establishing a continuous feedback loop between sales, customer success and marketing to ensure ongoing visibility and enable continuous improvement. Using insights gleaned from the voice of your own customers gives your organization a significant competitive edge:
- Sellers are empowered to win against more poorly prepared competitors
- Key business initiatives are far more likely to succeed because they’re informed by critical field-based evidence
- Best practices are easy to identify, share and replicate
- Marketing can craft messaging that aligns buyer needs
- More sellers will make or exceed quota
- Your organization will meet or exceed revenue targets
To learn more about the value of conversation intelligence and call recording solutions and how Mindtickle’s Call AI is helping other organizations lean into the voice of the customer, click here.
