The world of sales coaching is rapidly evolving. What worked five years ago, won’t work on today’s sales call agents. With the rise of conversational intelligence software, sales call agents can now receive 1-on-1 coaching through software instead of their managers.
Coaching can be tailored based on the conversation instead of repeating the same objections over and over. Managers can focus on developing their employees instead of repeating the same training.
We’re going to take a look at some of the top conversational intelligence software for coaching sales call agents. This is a great place to start if you’re looking to exceed your sales goals for 2023.
Coaching Sales Call Agents Has Evolved
There are four reasons as to why sales coaching has evolved compared to five years ago. It’s important for managers to understand each segment and how it may impact their team directly. If you’re not proficient in each category, that’s perfectly fine. You can use these as a guiding source to start improving your processes, metrics, and coaching.
Technology
With the advancement of technology, coaching has transformed into immediate feedback for sales call agents. No longer do agents need to wait days until they receive feedback from their manager.
Software now leverages AI and machine learning to analyze sales conversations, provide actionable insights, and offer recommendations to sales call agents in real-time. Plus managers can now oversee how their team is progressing individually toward their goals.
Virtual/remote teams
No longer are teams sitting in a single room where managers can walk around and coach them. It’s resulted in Slack messages or emails, which have been proven to not have the same effect as in-person coaching.
Managers need to adapt to allow for more flexibility, scalability, and accessibility for their sales teams in order to achieve what was once previously accomplished in the office. This means tech stacks need to be more intentional and not overwhelming. Expecting your team to use five or more systems to call prospects is outdated. Keep your tech stack simple.
Buyer-centric market
The market has changed. SaaS companies have had to drastically change the way they approach prospects. Buyers are more cautious with their budgets and expect to see ROI sooner rather than later. This is why a lot of companies have moved to product-led growth opportunities paired with the traditional outbound sales process.
Agents that are using conversational intelligence software have a leg up as they receive insights immediately based on trends and what prospects are saying. Buyer personas, pain points, and tailored messaging are winning deals. The spray-and-pray approach is over.
Continuous coaching, not micromanaging
Sales call agents have more say in their daily use of technology than ever before. There is a focus on continued growth and learning and less on micromanaging. Managers need to provide sales coaching by giving agents ongoing support, reinforcement, and ways to learn.
Barging or whispering on calls is a thing of the past. Agents, especially in the B2B SaaS world, want to succeed without having to read directly from a script. This is why talk tracks, wikis, and battlecards can make such a difference with your sales team.
Top Conversational Intelligence Software in 2023
In today’s market, conversational intelligence tools have taken over. There are endless options for buyers which makes it even harder to find the right solution for your team.
We’ve put together the top three options based on G2 reviews, market research, and overall customer satisfaction.
Abstrakt
With the fastest real-time AI on the market, Abstrakt provides a unique solution compared to most conversational intelligence companies.
The emphasis on guiding agents in real-time over post-call analytics gives them the power to overcome objections live on the call. No more waiting until the call is over to make a change.
Solving the issues managers have with remote teams, Abstrakt coaches each agent on every call.
Playbooks are launched based on who your team is speaking with and react immediately to their behavior. Recommended responses are instantly triggered (in 0.2 seconds), based on the challenges or objections thrown your team’s way. Plus with real-time transcription, managers have visibility into every call immediately. No more waiting for transcripts or audio to upload.
No more whispers or barging, Abstrakt provides call guidance for sales call agents live on the call without their manager having to be there.
Gong
Gong is another conversational intelligence software that uses AI to analyze sales calls. They are one of the original companies that started in the conversational intelligence space. Their product has evolved into a sales funnel and forecast software.
Their focus is on call analytics to provide actionable insights to call agents and managers. There is no emphasis on real-time sales coaching.
Gong’s revenue intelligence platform uses proprietary and patented AI tech to accurately understand customer interactions. This helps increase visibility, drive decision-making, and align strategies to achieve successful outcomes.
With this valuable data, managers can view overall team performance, allowing them to identify trends and patterns happening within sales calls. From there, they can optimize their coaching strategies.
Wingman by Clari
Wingman was acquired by Clari in 2022 to allow the company to compete more directly with Gong and larger revenue intelligence companies. The focus of Wingman or as Clari now describes it “Clari Copilot”, has been revenue leakage and deal focused.
Clari Copilot proactively reviews deal-changing insights such as potential blockers, competitor mentions, and next steps. This way managers can make informed decisions based on their team’s performance.
Enthu.AI
Speech analytics and call monitoring/quality software like Enthu.AI help you identify top coaching opportunities for your sales agents. The software is configurable to the needs of a sales team and the types of conversations they make with their customers.
The quality insights generated by the tool are funnelled back into agent training and coaching programs, making mediocre sales people rockstars.
Enthu.AI offers call quality assurance across 100% of your calls encompassing speech-to-text conversion, call summaries, and identification of top moments or ideas that might have been missed. The software automatically surfaces agent improvement opportunities,and pinpoints the areas that need attention.
What’s remarkable is its ability to evaluate sales conversations without listening to every single minute, saving time and human effort.Enthu.AI offers both automatic and manual scorecards, along with metrics tracking agent performance over time, empowers teams to quantify progress effectively.
Enthu.AI seamlessly integrates with leading telephony systems, dialers and CRMs, streamlining communication processes.
Teams use this software to record your calls, review deals, scale coaching, and build a repeatable sales machine. AI coaching software empower agents with scalable, objective coaching for rapid performance improvement.
Best Practices Before Implementing Software
Once you find the right solution for your team, the next step is almost just as important to ensure implementation goes smoothly. If you go too fast and don’t ensure your sales call agents are using it properly, it can go nowhere. It will fall off as fast as it was implemented.
If you go too slow, you won’t get the buy-in you need from the C-suite in terms of ROI and growth metrics. Plus understanding what capabilities you need right now versus which ones can be added on at a later date once your team is using the software.
Here are the best practices we’ve seen thus far while implementing conversational intelligence software.
1. Set realistic expectations and goals
When implementing a new tool, you can’t expect to see results within 24 hours. Be realistic and work with your CSM and agent on the new tool to set measurable goals.
We like to say, take a “walk, jog, run approach”. This means you start small, get the software running for your team, and make changes along the way. Before you know it, your team will be running the tool like they’ve been using it for years.
2. Roll out the solution to a small group of sales call agents to start
When you roll out a new process to your entire team right away, there are many speed bumps that can be avoided if you start with a small group instead. When it comes to conversational intelligence software that’s AI-driven, it can be overwhelming for those who haven’t used it before.
Choose some of your top performers as well as lower performers to see where tweaks need to be made before rolling it out to the rest of your team. You can also call this “training the software”.
3. Create an ROI plan of action
Once the software is rolled out to your team, now is the time to set measurable goals and ROI expectations. Analyzing performance on a weekly and monthly basis is key. Key metrics like meetings booked, objections handled, talk time ratio, and deals won can all be included in this plan.
Managers can then utilize these insights and metrics to identify areas of improvement for their team and optimize performance.
4. Review & Refine
While this is one of the most common steps in any implementation it is often forgotten. This is why companies have to search for new software every year or two because they don’t use their current ones to their fullest potential.
Whether you like it or not, conversational intelligence software is an ongoing process. It’s not set and forget it. Managers need to regularly evaluate performance, gather feedback from their team, and make improvements. This also means asking for certain upgrades or understanding the product roadmap of the solution you choose.
Conclusion
By following these steps, you can create a strong foundation for choosing and implementing conversational intelligence software. Additionally, you can also create meaningful and effective processes for your agents to follow on calls with prospects.
Your sales call agents will be better equipped to overcome the objections as they continue to face challenges from the macro environment as talked about at the beginning of this article. Sales managers now understand how to provide next-level sales coaching with software assisting their team in real-time.
Regardless of which software solution your company chooses, ensure you choose a company that will help you champion the software. Meaning they have a rockstar customer success team to help you each step of the way.
Author:
Greg Reffner – CEO & Founder of Abstrakt
