How Real Sales Managers Use Conversational Intelligence

Conversational intelligence tools — programs that use artificial intelligence to automatically record, transcribe, and analyze hours of sales calls — are becoming a staple of a growing number of sales organizations' tech stacks.

And it makes sense — tracking and pulling insight from sales calls manually is a frustrating, labor-intensive, often ineffective burden that can eat up sales managers' time without offering much return.

Now that this software is starting to have a more prominent place in a wider range of sales orgs' operations, it's worth exploring a bit further — specifically when it comes to the benefits it can offer.

Sales managers stand to gain a lot by incorporating this kind of tech into their teams' day-to-day and broader sales efforts. Here, we'll take a look at some of the ways managers can use conversational intelligence and see if one of these resources is worth the investment.

How Managers Can Use Conversational Intelligence

Identify where reps need coaching, and develop high-performers faster.

Conversational intelligence platforms lend themselves to more concentrated, effective sales coaching — most notably when it comes to keeping reps in line with your broader messaging and refining how they communicate prospects individually.

Shadowing calls can be inefficient — after all, you probably have multiple reps on your team and only so much time during your workday. Conversational intelligence lets you expedite the process. It can be a big help for this aspect of your day-to-day.

Most of these programs offer call recordings and accurate transcripts. With these reference points at your disposal, you can identify patterns that might be holding lower-performing reps back — all without having to take a considerable portion of your time to look over their shoulders and offer your thoughts.

That means you can offer pointed, personalized feedback at specific points in your reps' conversations — providing them with a clearer picture of what they're doing wrong and how they can best address those issues.

Better understand the voice of your customer.

As a manager, you can't thoughtfully critique and improve your reps' sales call skills if you don't understand how they should be talking. That kind of knowledge stems from knowing how your customers communicate. Certain language and talking points will resonate with your base more than others — it serves you to have a solid feel for them.

Conversational intelligence makes it considerably easier to get that perspective. These platforms offer you the insight and visibility necessary to keep a pulse on your customers' collective voice and interests.

It can shed light on consistently mentioned events, industry-specific trends, keywords related to your performance or solutions, names of competitors that register most with specific kinds of customers, and other invaluable insight that lends itself to more effective sales communication.

It lets you stay hip to patterns, subjects, and objections that consistently come up across your reps' conversations with prospects — allowing you to form more effective personas and tailor your messaging to best suit them.

Get a better picture of the 'why' behind your team performance.

The utility of the patterns, subjects, and objections that conversational intelligence brings to light extends beyond refining your sales coaching. They can be significant assets when figuring out your broader sales strategies.

With conversational intelligence, you get a deeper, accurate understanding of the "why" behind your sales conversations. It's easy to refer to your sales metrics and base your process and strategies around them, but they only give you a piece of the picture.

The data from conversational intelligence helps you flesh that picture out. It helps you stay abreast of the trends that frame your KPIs. That information can be invaluable when shaping elements of your sales efforts like your process and messaging.

Is conversational intelligence software worth the investment?

The short answer? Probably.

These kinds of platforms provide invaluable insight that can make your job as a sales manager a lot more straightforward. You can be more involved in your reps' development while expending less energy and effort.

You can take a different angle to compiling and analyzing data that gives you a more holistic picture of who your target personas are, their preferences, and how they communicate. And this kind of software generally doesn't break the bank.

Resources like HubSpot's conversation intelligence, Avoma, Wingman, Jiminny, Ciara, and Fireflies are all excellent tools, available at reasonable prices that can benefit sales organizations of virtually any scale or structure.

Conversational intelligence can improve every facet of your sales org's operations.Everyone involved — from BDRs to managers — stands to gain from leveraging it.

If you want more thorough insight that lets you get the most out of your training, speed up onboarding, have a better feel for how your customers communicate, and better understand the nuances of your performance, consider investing in one of these resources.