How To Choose A Conversation Intelligence Platform

Lindsey Plocek on January 17, 2024

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.

of B2B buyers expect the same experience as B2C
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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.

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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? 

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This post was originally published in January 2023 and was updated in January 2024. 

Sales Methodology: What is it and How to Choose One for Your Business

Lindsey Plocek on December 29, 2023

If your teams don’t have a sales methodology, they need one — and fast.

You also aren’t alone.

According to our 2022-2023 Sales Enablement Outlook Report, less than half (43%) of respondents say their organizations have an institutionalized sales methodology.

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The best sales methodologies act as a framework, guiding reps through each stage of the sales process. These approaches should be scalable, measurable and — perhaps most importantly — repeatable. But there are tons of common sales methodologies out there, and while each has its benefits, you need to know which fits your business best.

Here’s your guide to sales methodologies and how to make the right choice.

What is a sales methodology?

A sales methodology is like a thread uniting different stages of the sales cycle. When your reps follow this thread, they know exactly what to say and when to say it, what buyers are thinking at different times and how to build better relationships. While the customers, products and teams may change, the best sales methodologies can stay consistent because they’re based on best practices.

Of course, that’s not to say that a sales methodology is “one size fits all.” These frameworks can and should scale depending on new training materials, shifting buyer expectations and what you learn in the ever-changing world of sales.

Why is a sales methodology important for any business?

Sales reps might feel they have an instinct for making all the right moves in customer communication — and they could very well be right. The best sales methodologies don’t replace those instincts, but rather build on them to create a shared, consistent approach that keeps every individual and team pushing in the same direction.

Here are a few more reasons you need a sales methodology:

 

Solid sales frameworks are flexible enough to enable accurate, personalized responses without changing your approach for every individual buyer.

Toggle ContentThese guidelines are informed by sales performance metrics and best practices, which means they’re based on what actually works instead of what should work.

A single sales methodology unites many sales processes to encompass every activity, interaction and stage for both buyers and sales reps.

Skip the guesswork and let your sales frameworks identify where and when a lead fits into your pipeline.

With the right set of guidelines, your reps will be better prepared to overcome challenges, address hesitations and build trust — the first step toward more and better deals.

As your business and customers change, your sales methodology will too. You’ll have the insight, data and tools you need to identify what’s working, what isn’t and where improvements need to be made.

What are some common sales methodologies?

When choosing the best approaches for your teams, it’s often helpful to have sales methodology examples in front of you. Here are just a few to consider:

MEDICC

MEDDIC is an acronym that represents a comprehensive sales qualification framework. Each letter in stands for a key element in the sales process.

  • Metrics refers to understanding the quantifiable goals and objectives of the customer.
  • Economic buyer refers to identifying the person who has the authority and financial power to make purchasing decisions.
  • Decision criteria involves understanding the specific requirements and criteria that the customer uses to evaluate potential solutions.
  • Decision process refers to comprehending the steps and individuals involved in the customer’s decision-making process.
  • Identify pain involves discovering and understanding the customer’s challenges, problems, and pain points.
  • Champion refers to finding an internal advocate within the customer’s organization who supports and promotes your solution.

Takeaway: Use the MEDDIC framework to thoroughly understand customer needs, decision-making process, and leverage internal champions for successful sales.

BANT

BANT is a sales qualification methodology and assesses potential customers. It stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. Each element represents a crucial aspect of determining the viability of a sales opportunity.

  • Budget refers to understanding the prospect’s financial resources and whether they have the means to make a purchase.
  • Authority involves identifying the decision-makers and influencers involved in the buying process.
  • Need refers to assessing the prospect’s specific pain points and determining how well your product or service can address them.
  • Timeline involves understanding the prospect’s urgency and when they intend to make a decision or implement a solution.

Takeaway: Assess leads effectively using BANT: Determine budget, authority, need, and timeline to prioritize sales efforts and qualify potential opportunities.

Consultative selling

The most important part of consultative selling is right in its name: the consultation. Buyers come to you because they have unanswered questions, and they need your reps to act as guides. Key processes involve listening, communicating and collaborating.

Takeaway: Consultative selling builds trust by being primarily informational instead of promotional. ​

Solution selling

Sometimes, customers already know exactly what their problem is — all you have to do is tell them what the solution can look like. Even before the first call, this sales methodology requires that your reps have a particularly solid understanding of:

  • The buyer
  • Their needs and challenges
  • The most targeted offerings for their situation

Takeaway: Solution selling is more focused on addressing a problem than selling a particular product or service.

Provocative selling

When you use this framework, your reps need to be able to identify pain points before buyers do and then provoke them to research solutions. In many ways, reps are “selling” problems first and products second.

Takeaway: Provocative selling is all about being proactive and giving customers what they didn’t even know they needed.

Challenger sales

Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson developed “The Challenger Sales Method.” In their book of the same name, they discuss various seller archetypes and identify the most successful: challengers, who represented 40% of high-performing sales reps in the authors’ study.

Takeaway: Challenger sales methodologies focus on empowering other rep archetypes to teach prospects, tailor their communications and take control of sales.

Inbound selling

In this sales methodology, you acknowledge that buyers are doing more work themselves and may not contact your reps until they’re well into the pipeline. That means sales might take a back seat for your reps as they educate and advise buyers.

Takeaway: With inbound selling, qualified leads come to you instead of the other way around — so while the sales processes might look different, they may be far more efficient.

SPIN selling

Neil Rackham’s book, “SPIN Selling,” builds a sales methodology around four key kinds of questions:

  • Situation: What is the customer’s current need or challenge
  • Problem: Where is the problem coming from?
  • Implication: What happens if nothing is done?
  • Need-payoff: What are the benefits of solving the problem?

Takeaway: When strung together, these kinds of questions allow reps to lead buyers on a kind of realization journey in which they connect their problems to specific solutions.

Target account selling

This sales methodology is all about research and automation. It’s an approach that emphasizes the importance of choosing the right accounts to focus on — those that will be most responsive and easiest to sell to.

Takeaway: Research is vital in all the best sales methodologies, but it’s at the heart of target account selling — so reps must fully understand personas, key decision-makers, in-depth challenge breakdowns and more.

Sandler Selling Method

This approach is built on the concept that buyers and sellers must trust one another to have a successful relationship. That means there has to be communication, collaboration and mutual respect. This methodology is similar to consultative selling but has a more prescriptive framework: building a relationship, quantifying the lead and ultimately closing the deal.

Takeaway: The Sandler Selling Method works best when buyers want and need to be able to lean on reps as decision-making partners, not just sales experts.

How to identify and choose the right sales methodology for your business

Say you have a Software as a Service (SaaS) company. You do some research and find common approaches — but the best sales methodology for SaaS organizations isn’t the same as the best sales methodology for manufacturers, retailers, food sellers or real estate agents.

So how do you choose the right one for you?

Most common sales methodologies, among organizations who have one

Source: 2022-2023 Sales Enablement Outlook Report. 

 

#1: Evaluate your business goals and objectives

Whether you’re trying to improve sales performance, boost revenue, grow your business or hit some other goal, it’s important to keep the future in mind when deciding on a sales methodology. This helps align your sales team with your overall business objectives and makes sales activities that much more efficient.

#2: Analyze target market and customers

To find out what works best for your customers, you have to know who they are, how they think and what markets they spend time in. With this analysis at your fingertips, you can choose methodologies that will resonate with your audience instead of relying on an ill-fitting or “tone-deaf” approach.

#3: Consider business size and industry

Think about how many people and resources you can dedicate to a sales methodology. Is there too much to do, or do the tasks and approaches seem well-balanced? The size of your business will have a big influence on this, but so will your industry, which dictates much of what customers expect and how your sales processes need to work together.

#4: Experiment and evaluate

Remember that sales methodologies can be mixed, matched and combined to make them work for you. Keep track of relevant data to see whether a certain approach is working or if you need to weave in concepts, processes or theories from other frameworks.

How to get started with implementing a sales methodology for your business

Once you’ve chosen a sales methodology, it’s time to jump in. Here’s how to get started:

Evaluate current skills

It’s important to know what your reps bring to the table and what they’ll need to learn to adapt to a new sales methodology. This is also a chance to reflect on your sales training methodologies and fill in any gaps.

Create new training material

As you train reps on the new sales methodology, make sure to cover:

  • Which of their former processes are sticking around
  • Which processes will be updated
  • Which processes will be completely changed
  • What your overall philosophy is
  • What your goals look like.
  • The benefits of the new methodology

Remember to make this sales training material consistent and easily accessible — not just to the sales teams but to all departments,

Assess and provide feedback

Track your reps’ learning curves and provide support, feedback or coaching where they need it most. Remember to capture best practices and particularly helpful examples to build out your methodology going forward.

Putting your sales methodology to use

If you want to choose, implement, track and improve a sales methodology, you can’t afford to do it in disparate systems. That’s not just bad news for your business outcomes; it also creates frustration for sales reps, other teams and even customers.

Instead, unite your sales activity in a single revenue productivity platform. 

Ready to see for yourself? 

Mindtickle in action

From onboarding and training to data capture, performance reviews, and ongoing learning, Mindtickle is your best bet for getting more out of sales methodologies.

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This post was originally published in June 2023 and updated in December 2023. 

How Managers Can Use Conversation Intelligence For Sales

Lindsey Plocek on November 20, 2023

As conversation intelligence platforms become a cornerstone of the sales tech stack, sales leaders and their teams are exploring how sales managers can use them to boost results and create a team of top performers.

To answer this question, we’ve put together an in-depth analysis of:

  • What conversation intelligence is
  • Why we believe conversation intelligence is worth the investment
  • How conversation intelligence works
  • The benefits of this new technology for sales teams
  • How managers can use conversation intelligence to improve sales performance

What is conversation intelligence?

Conversation intelligence is a technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to review sales conversations and compile data-driven insights for improved sales performance.

It gives your managers and reps a single system of record for elevating rep performance during customer interactions, including:

  • Call recordings
  • Call scoring and analytics
  • Customer sentiment
  • In-line coaching
  • Best practices

This gives your team a single data model to identify top seller behaviors and a single compliance model that ensures everyone is on the same page, implementing best practices.

Is conversation intelligence worth the investment?

The global conversation AI market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21.8%, delivering a market value of USD $18.4B by 2026, according to Markets and Markets.

Conversation AI market value by 2026
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It gives you complete visibility into what’s happening on deals by analyzing customer conversations on calls and meetings — giving you a 64% increase in revenue generated by reps in their first quarter and a 50% average reduction in new hire onboarding time.

After reviewing these numbers, the real question is: Can you afford not to invest in conversation intelligence?

How does conversation intelligence work?

You’ve no doubt been on a call where a bot is recording the meeting. But what happens with that recording after it’s delivered to a manager’s inbox or stored in the recordings section of a sales platform?

In most organizations: nothing.

But there’s far too much valuable insight there to be ignored or, worse, forgotten about. And that’s where conversation intelligence software comes in.

 

With this technology, your recordings can be used for more than playbacks. It makes it easy for reps and managers to quickly find information in calls. It also does the heavy lifting of analyzing calls and providing valuable feedback for improving customer experience and overall sales performance.

For reps, it shares actionable insights that allow for self-diagnosis and self-coaching. For new reps, it leads to faster onboarding and skill development. For managers, it gives a high-level overview of the team’s performance as well as data for understanding the behaviors of top performers.

Keep in mind that this technology isn’t spyware for keeping tabs on your reps. It provides deep intelligence that empowers managers and reps to get more done, more efficiently, so they can hit quota and beyond.

With conversation intelligence software, teams are moving deals forward faster and quickly identifying signals that indicate they’re stalling or are ready to close.

It’s also guiding product marketing messaging and offers, so future sales conversations become easier.

The benefits of conversation intelligence for your sales team

Conversation intelligence is often mistakenly compared to a transcription tool, but the benefits go far beyond transcripts. Here are some of the top benefits of using this technology for sales.

 

At the end of the day, conversation intelligence is about revenue and creating a better experience for the buyer or customer.

It does this by helping reps be better prepared, both before and during calls. It suggests relevant content that reps can review to prepare for calls. And it frees reps to stop taking notes so they can focus on the conversation.

Reps are able to pay more attention to their selling motions and actively listen to the buyer. As a result, the prospect feels like they’re being heard; like their issues are being addressed.

Conversation intelligence tools give sellers one source of record to get their job done. It provides a library of resources and training, benchmarks for their selling behaviors, and actionable metrics on their calls.

This empowers reps to evaluate and coach themselves, so they can level up quickly.

A 2023 Salesforce study found that sellers spend less than 30% of their time selling. The other two-thirds of their time is spent on everything else.

That’s why it’s vital that sellers have a single platform where they find everything they need in just one or two clicks and automation that frees up their time.

Conversation intelligence is a big step in that direction. The platform records their calls, provides feedback and links to useful content, while helping reps track prospect questions and objections.

Managers don’t always have the time and resources to give personalized coaching. But with conversation intelligence, coaching is built into the platform.

Every call is scored, giving reps immediate feedback on strengths and areas for improvement. And managers can quickly add recommendations and constructive feedback when they review calls.

With this level of feedback, reps are able to coach themselves or seek peer-to-peer assistance.

Managers need to coach sellers, perform call reviews, give feedback that impacts performance, keep tabs on pipeline, and make accurate forecasts. For all of these tasks, conversation intelligence does the heavy lifting.

It gives relevant, accurate data on performance, so managers know how to support reps. It automates call scoring, so call reviews are faster and more precise. And it flags moments in calls that signal intent, so it’s easier to keep prospects moving through the pipeline.

The insights available through conversation intelligence are key to every area of revenue, from marketing to sales enablement to customer support. The challenge has been finding an effective way to share that information.

With conversation intelligence, sales data, and competitive intelligence are readily available to any area of your organization.

With the deep insights available through conversation intelligence, reps get the insights they need to become top sellers.

Call scores tell them whether their messaging landed, what the prospect sentiment was, and how they can improve to stay on message.

They can get off one call, review the feedback provided in the system, and understand where they need to improve — then apply that learning to their next call.

Conversation intelligence also helps them understand whether their messaging is landing. This helps them adjust quickly, when needed, to keep deals moving forward.

Conversation intelligence gives real-time data that’s invaluable for understanding what sellers need to succeed. By reviewing the metrics and call scores, you can identify the skills, competencies, and content that need your focus:

  • Content needed to move a deal forward
  • More accurate customer profiles
  • Market research and competitive intelligence
  • Pre- and post-call coaching
  • Skills exercises and role-plays

 

What are the best ways for managers to use conversation intelligence?

As you can see, conversation intelligence has the potential to transform your sales team. But it only works if you know how to use it. So let’s explore seven ways managers can use conversation intelligence in their day-to-day activities.

1. Leverage data for better results

Conversation intelligence scores your reps’ calls and highlights key moments, so you can manage your reps’ performance in less time. The data will tell you:

  • Are they adhering to MEDDPICC?
  • How are they handling objections?
  • What questions are they asking and receiving?
  • Which competitor mentions are they fielding?
  • How are pricing and negotiation conversations handled?
  • Are there words that need to be said or avoided?
  • Are their deals progressing smoothly?

How to use this intelligence:

Use the data provided in the conversation intelligence platform to help you understand reps’ behaviors. Then leave comments encouraging them, linking to content that can help them, and providing actionable feedback.

Stay alert for trends in calls. If all of your reps are struggling with the same issue, you may need to provide training to improve competencies or alert the leadership team of issues.

2. Study top performers and their processes

Conversation intelligence scores sales calls, so you can quickly identify the key behaviors of your A-sellers:

  • What are the themes they talk about
  • How do they handle objections and competitor takedowns?
  • How many exchanges do they have with a prospect?

This data is valuable for coaching other sellers to uplevel their skills.

How to use this intelligence:

Analyze your top sellers’ calls to identify the behaviors they use consistently to drive results. Use these insights to create a top-seller profile, so the entire team knows the behaviors they need to develop.

3. Faster (and better) onboarding of new team members

It can take six to nine months for new sellers to ramp, and another six months for them to become top performers, according to RAIN Group. And sales managers play a major role in this ramp-up period.

Conversation intelligence allows you to give quick feedback on reps’ performance and suggest content or exercises that will help them level up. By providing immediate, relevant feedback, you can reduce ramp time by as much as 45%.

How to use this intelligence:

Use call scores to identify new reps’ strengths and opportunities. After reviewing calls, add positive and constructive feedback — including inline commentary in their call recordings, so they can understand what they’re doing and how it impacts their performance. And recommend content that will help them boost their skill.

4. Create a continuous coaching culture

Your reps want to succeed. But they need a safe coaching environment, where the entire team works together to improve. With conversation intelligence, you can create that kind of environment.

It gives you a bird’s-eye view of your team’s performance as well as allows deep dives into individual sellers’ performance. It scores each call against best practices, so you understand the competencies that need work.

How to use this intelligence:

Develop quizzes, exercises, and activities that can improve your key performance metrics. Then encourage the team to work together on them.

While you may reward individual seller achievements, focus on the team’s progress. Your goal is to turn C-players into B-players and B-players into A-players.

5. Build seller confidence

Often, sellers are resistant to conversation intelligence technology because it pulls back the curtain on what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. It can feel like Big Brother is watching, making reps afraid of how that will impact their future with your organization.

But conversation intelligence isn’t a performance tracker. It’s a tool designed for sellers to help them succeed. For instance, after implementing this technology:

How to use this intelligence:

It’s important to explain to sellers why you’re implementing conversation intelligence. They need to understand its ability to:

  • Increase productivity
  • Discover self-coaching and peer-to-peer coaching opportunities
  • Gain real-world feedback on their performance
  • Collaborate better with other revenue teams

When introducing it to your team, demonstrate how the technology works, and show them how it can be used to help them get more done, in less time, and with better results.

6. Listen to the voice of the market

Conversation intelligence gives a full transcript of every call. It reveals the questions asked and received and captures prospects’ responses.

This gives you deep insight into the market’s needs. It tells you whether your messaging is landing, and reveals the features or benefits you need to lead with.

How to use this intelligence:

Mine sales calls for the specific words used by your prospects to express their needs, desires, and pain points.

As you review calls, listen to the prospect. What are they saying? What does this tell you about the market? These are points of intelligence that need to be shared with leadership, marketing teams, and other departments.

7. Review deals and base forecasts on real evidence

Ultimately, your job is to raise the sales team’s performance to drive consistent revenue growth. With conversation intelligence, you don’t have to depend on sellers’ reports of how their deals are progressing. With just a few clicks, you can review deals and see where they are in the pipeline.

How to use this intelligence:

This technology gives you a 360-degree view of your accounts and opportunities. Use it to keep your finger on the pulse of every deal where it is in the pipeline, how likely it is to move forward, and how fast.

Your forecasts won’t be guesswork. They’ll be based on in-field data. This allows you to give more accurate forecasts and hold yourself and your team accountable.

Bottom line

Conversation intelligence has transformed the sales floor, providing insights to improve onboarding, productivity, and performance.

The biggest challenge is getting sales teams to feel comfortable with this technology. Full transparency can be unnerving.

But if you focus on the benefits of conversation intelligence and the single system of record that elevates rep performance, you’ll get the buy-in you’re looking for.

Essentially, conversation intelligence is the cheat code for success — for managers and reps alike.

Conversation Intelligence in Action

Want to learn more about Mindtickle's conversation intelligence solution, Call AI? 

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This post was originally published in August 2022 and was updated in November 2023. 

How Paytronix’s Revenue Leaders Doubled Win Rates and Improved Conversions by 12%

Lindsey Plocek on November 17, 2023

It’s that time of year when revenue organizations are reflecting on 2023 and making plans for the year ahead.

And Mindtickle customers are setting the bar high for achieving revenue excellence.

We recently sat down with Adam Whiddon, Sales Enablement Trainer at Paytronix to learn more about his plans to boost sales performance in 2024 and beyond. Paytronix is the leading digital guest engagement platform for restaurants and convenience stores. Paytronix offers loyalty and online ordering to such brands as Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Panera Bread, and PF Chang’s,

Adam assists in enabling the 300-person organization, which includes more than 30 sales reps and customer-facing teammates.

Conversion improvement
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Win rate
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As someone who helped lead Paytronix to double its win rates and improve stage conversions by 12% on key deals, Adam can help guide other revenue leaders to the same success.

Here are Adam’s top learnings using Mindtickle to assist in Paytronix’s revenue transformation:

1. Drive cross-functional revenue team alignment

Paytronix’s leadership team was clear on its intentions: they needed to transform revenue operations in many areas all at once digitally. Everything from improving win rates to streamlining onboarding, increasing deal velocity, growing pipeline, reducing time to contribution, and consolidating its tech stack was on the table.

To do so, Paytronix sought out an easy-to-use centralized hub for all sales training and sales content that could also double as an LMS for the entire company, including customer onboarding.

At the same time, they needed to roll out some of the company’s first formal training programs, drive the adoption of a new sales qualification framework – MEDDICC – and provide scalable, data-driven ways for sales leaders to provide personalized coaching.

Pretty massive change, right?

That was only possible by engaging every level of its revenue leadership team in the process of identifying a revenue transformation partner, including the CEO, CRO, CMO, CPO, VP of Sales, and Sr. Director of Enablement and Strategy.

2. Focus on increasing buyer & customer engagement

As part of the effort to consolidate its tech stack, Paytronix prioritized capabilities that would help the team improve the buyer journey and engagement. This included implementing revenue intelligence to score deal health and provide a full picture of all of the activity taking place within accounts and deals; conversation intelligence to validate that reps were utilizing the MEDDICC framework on calls; and Digital Sales Rooms to arm customers with mutual action plans and provide personalized, educational content experiences.

On deals that leveraged Digital Sales Rooms and had visits, Paytronix saw their win rate double and an average of 12% stage-by-stage conversion rate. The Digital Sales Rooms were particularly successful with high engagement at and after stage two of their sales cycle.

3. Streamline the sales tech stack

In the past, Adam and others on the Paytronix team tried virtually every LMS and well-known sales technology solution to measure and improve revenue performance.

But more tech did not necessarily result in better sales. In fact, tool sprawl not only drove up sales tech costs but also made it more difficult for reps to find things.

To remedy this, the Paytronix team sought out a revenue enablement platform that would provide all the LMS and content management capabilities he needed and include things like conversation and revenue intelligence to inspect calls and deals. This would enable Paytronix to lay the groundwork for a culture built on data-driven coaching.

Consolidation not only saved Paytronix a sizable amount of money but enabled them to provide every rep with a personalized home page that suggested the top training, content, and calls that were most valuable to their book of business and skillset.

As for his plans for next year? Adam aims to help the sales team increase win rates by another 2%+ in 2024, drive greater accountability to sales best practices, and make it even easier for sales reps to engage buyers at every stage in the sales cycle effectively.

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4 Must-Have 2023 Sales Technologies for CROs and RevOps Leaders

Lindsey Plocek on November 1, 2023

Over the last few months, I’ve met with dozens of CROs and RevOps leaders to understand their biggest pain points, all of which have been amplified by the current market conditions. These companies ranged from F500s to high-growth commercial companies in markets like B2B tech, education, finance, insurance, and consumer healthcare. Most had a minimum of 25 revenue-generating reps on their team, but some had several thousand. As I learned about their challenges, it became clear there are some recurring themes when it comes to the sales technologies in their stack.

Here’s what I heard during my tour:

  • “We simply don’t have enough repeatability built into our sales org.”
  • “We need to get better at timing deals and knowing why they’re won or lost.”
  • “One or two over-performers won’t cover our delta. We need the team to scale.”
  • “Too much of our pipeline is high-risk and disengaged. We’ve got to change that.”
  • “My sales team has premature presentation syndrome. How do I get them personalizing and building better business cases?”
  • “An annual SKO is not enough. How do I get my team ‘microdosing’ sales training every day?”
  • “We can’t keep creating enablement from scratch. It’s breaking us.”
  • “How do we get managers to coach more and reps to self-improve?”

These challenges are validated by industry research. We know that the sales process has gotten more complex – 63% of purchases now have four decision-makers involved and the number of buyer interactions has jumped to more than 27. At the same time, sellers have become less productive. Only 32% of a sales reps’ time is actually spent selling and on top of that, according to our 2022-2023 Sales Enablement Outlook Report, the average organization uses more than 10+ sales tools.

Purchases with 4 decision-makers
0 %
Number of buyer interactions
0 +
Time spent selling
0 %

But when it comes to addressing these challenges, which technologies are actually worth using and materially impact revenue? This blog post outlines where to start when you’re looking to build an efficient, seamless sales tech stack and technologies to consider.

Your sales tech stack: Where to start

The biggest mistake CROs and RevOps leaders make is that they throw tools at problems instead of first outlining their pain points, use cases, and desired workflows. This will lead to a bloated, expensive tech stack that doesn’t get used.

Instead, focus on finding solutions that address the following critical use cases:

  • Know which customers to engage, when, and how
  • Capture emails, calls, meetings, and contacts to get insights on how to improve buyer engagement
  • Help sellers know who to follow up with, and which content to send
  • Research relevant topics like products and competitors to personalize your pitch
  • Effectively prepare for meetings and follow-up

Get really clear about outlining the specific things your reps need to do. Some examples include:

  • Logging activities faster, easier, and more accurately (or better yet, automate it all)
  • Managing and prioritizing accounts, leads, and opportunities
  • Managing contacts and auto-syncing them to the CRM
  • Measuring buyer engagement
  • Making sense of their sales performance & coaching opportunities
  • Managing and automating pipeline and forecasting

Conversation & revenue intelligence

This year, it’s all about saving time for your sellers. Conversation and revenue intelligence tools help sellers manage opportunities intuitively and update the CRM without thinking. These solutions automatically sync call notes, contacts, emails, and call recordings to systems like Salesforce so sellers can focus on active listening more.

With a conversation or revenue intelligence solution in place, it’s easier to hand over deal and account history, as well as score deal health or uncover risks within opportunities.

Forecast automation

As I mentioned, making sense of pipeline gaps and forecasting with higher accuracy are two things keeping CROs and RevOps teams up at night. These leaders need complete control of the forecasting process, and to be able to trust the data their team inputs.

With AI forecasting tools, provided by companies like our partner BoostUp.AI, AI can predict which deals will close on time or not. At the same time, it can uncover risks in your pipeline and challenges your team faces driving buyer engagement at specific “problem stages” in your sales cycle.

Buyer/seller engagement platforms

With a buyer and seller engagement solution in place, sellers send more and better emails, make more and better calls, stay focused, and win more deals. These tools guide task prioritization while capturing and matching activity to the CRM.

For example, companies like Lavendar.AI and Regis.AI use generative AI to write emails for you. At Mindtickle, we use tools like LinkedIn Navigator, ZoomIQ, DemandBase, G2 intent data, Walnut, and Databook to drive better, more personalized buyer engagement.

We also offer Digital Sales Rooms so reps can build a personalized deal room for customers filled with content, call recordings, and action plans. DSRs allow you to track which customers engaged, and what content piqued their interest.

Enablement & templates for sales methodology adoption

Most organizations have put a new sales methodology in place to drive consistency in the current market. That might include MEDDPICC, BANT, Sandler, or one of many more.

But if you don’t have the ability to properly enable your team on these methodologies and no data on who is adopting them or not, that’s a problem.

Here at Mindtickle we can see what percentage of every opportunity our sales team creates has followed our preferred sales methodology as well as information gaps. We also offer off-the-shelf templates, sales plays, and other content to enable teams around the latest methodologies.

Some additional tips to consider

If you’re looking to improve and streamline your sales tech stack, it’s important that you consider the following tips.

  • Conduct a seller time assessment to see who is spending time on what topics
  • Examine your current workflow and see if there is an opportunity to reduce or streamline siloed tools
  • Carefully research the click path to not only access insights, but actually do something to move a deal forward, or coach a rep
  • Document the unique nuances of the fields and customization within your CRM
  • Aim to first capture necessary data around pipeline management, forecasting, deals, and calls
  • Build playbooks and enablement that help your sellers act on data. Where possible, empower them with AI-enabled workflows.

 

What's in your tech stack?

Connect with our team to see how Mindtickle fits into (and might replace) some tools in your current tech stack. 

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(This post was originally published in March 2023 and was updated in November 2023. )

Video: Why CROs are Focused on Revenue Intelligence

Lindsey Plocek on June 6, 2023

 

Episode summary

In this video, Mindtickle’s Lindsey Plocek shares three different use cases for why CROs are focused on revenue intelligence. She explains the different ways sales leaders and CROs now have visibility into deal health and can more accurately forecast with revenue intelligence. She also outlines how sales coaching is data-driven with managers now able to have more impactful coaching conversations with more reps. Finally, talks about focusing on the entire customer journey rather than just deal closing. Watch this video if you’re a CRO curious to know more about how organizations can use revenue intelligence or if you’re another leader trying to make a business case for investing in it.

Key highlights

  • CROs can now address known deal risks and identify low customer engagement. Reps and managers can see things like where they need to multithread or when competitors are mentioned.
  • Leaders can now forecast based on reality rather than opinions. Historical performance and deal nuances go into deal health scores so CROs can more confidently and accurately forecast.
  • More reliable data means managers can do more accurate, holistic deal reviews.
  • Fewer managers can manage more reps and have data-driven conversations about each deal.
  • Orgs are now focused on the entire customer journey – not just closing a deal. Every single handoff in the process now has full transparency and visibility.


Video transcription

Hi, everyone, I’m Lindsay Plocek with Mindtickle and I’m going to be talking about why CROs are focused on revenue intelligence right now. Let’s start with a couple of use cases and what revenue intelligence even means.

The first is really solving buyer engagement issues at every stage in your sales cycle. Revenue intelligence will basically transcribe and score every email meeting and call so that you can really focus on those truly engaged winnable deals. Your team can go in and they can address known deal risks, or issues of ghosting or low customer engagement to really win more.

This is a little bit of what it looks like. Our reps like to go in and, and self-coach or get some guidance from their manager on where prospects are unresponsive, where they need to multithread, where a competitor was mentioned. And so that is the first use case.

The second solves meeting to forecast on reality and not opinions. So a lot of folks, forecasts historically in CRM data was very inaccurate. With revenue intelligence, we can forecast with 95% or higher accuracy, because we take into account each rep and team’s historical performance and some of the unique nuances of each deal by scoring deal health. And that helps us forecast with more confidence.

The third use case is really about improving pipeline gen and win rate by building a data-driven coaching culture. So historically, people wanted to do dealing call reviews. But it was a little difficult to scale when you didn’t have that single pane of glass view when you didn’t have really great data. Now we’re seeing more managers, or excuse me, fewer managers can manage more reps. And they can do two or three times more deal and call reviews by leveraging revenue intelligence.

Some of the other reasons why I think this is happening now at this moment in the market. The first is really alignment. So we’re moving away from a world where people are just focused on revenue and sales to one where they’re focused on that entire customer journey. Every single handoff and every single stage in that process needs to provide full transparency and visibility and a follow-up playbook.

Increasingly, we’re also seeing that more people are involved in closing a deal. So there’s a bigger need for collaboration. And this can play a big role in that data and insights specifically on how people are performing in the field, not just the activities they’re doing, but the quality of their communication with customers whether the engagement is real or not.

Perhaps even more importantly, unlocking those really great customer insights on what customers are saying or doing or responding to. So that you can ultimately improve that customer experience and really personalize it.

And as I mentioned, a culture of coaching is a really important one. And this helps with that. So we at Mindtickle recently put out a report [The 2023 State of Sales Productivity Report] on this whole topic of driving revenue productivity. We interviewed CEOs and executives from 400-plus companies, so you can go and check that out.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with us, we offer a revenue productivity platform. We give reps all of the training content and insights they need to drive deals forward. And those that include solutions for sales enablement as well as sales operations. So please, if you have questions, drop them in the comments and we’re happy to answer them.

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Behind its shiny wrapper and market buzz, we’ve boiled down revenue intelligence into 4 fundamental elements that actually matter.

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Video: 4 Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing a Revenue Intelligence Solution

Lindsey Plocek on April 28, 2023

Episode summary

In this video, Mindtickle’s Director of Product Marketing, Lindsey Plocek, talks through the mistakes revenue operations leaders should avoid when choosing a revenue intelligence solution. She breaks down the difference between conversation intelligence and revenue intelligence and then dives into four common mistakes people might make when choosing a technology partner.

Key highlights 

Lindsey talks through the mistakes to avoid when choosing a revenue intelligence partner. Here they are:

  • Don’t focus on features focus on pain points you are solving and simplifying workflows
  • Don’t just stop it insights –  make insights actionable
  • Don’t just stop at the deal level
  • Don’t undervalue the quality of professional services

Video transcription

Hi everyone, I’m Lindsay and I lead product marketing for AI solutions at Mindtickle. Last time I came at you with some powerful tips lead discovery calls. And today I’m going to talk about four mistakes you should avoid making when choosing a partner for conversation intelligence or revenue intelligence.

Before I get into the four mistakes, I’m going to set the stage. So when I say conversation intelligence, I’m referring to technologies that record transcribe analyze sales conversations, sales meetings, as well as emails.

When I say revenue intelligence, I’m referring to using AI machine learning capabilities to analyze all of the activity taking place and actually predict what is going to close or not and deliver, you know, a deal score or an account health score. There’s some differences between these technologies.

But a simple way to think of it is analyzing interactions, and predicting what will actually close and how healthy your deals and accounts are. So when you are evaluating conversation and revenue intelligence partners avoid these four mistakes.

And the first is, don’t focus on features. Focus on pain points you are solving and simplifying workflows. The biggest mistake that I think people run into is they’re buying all these different sales technologies in silos. And as a former seller, that just takes time away from us being able to close deals. Your team has tool fatigue, they don’t want for 712 different places, they have to log in to get all the insights, training, and content they need to provide a better customer experience.

So when we think about sales reps, specifically, let’s think about some of the different things they need to be able to do with conversation and revenue intelligence insights:

  • Onboard and ramp faster
  • Better prepare for upcoming meetings without thinking
  • Get relevant coaching from their managers from their peers
  • Be able to self-coach
  • Share call snippets, transcripts, and mentions of competitors
  • Feedback on the product roadmap to share with other internal teams,
  • Know what content to send to a prospect or customer after an interaction
  • Easily and automatically update your CRM

So those are some of the top use cases. And of course, one is certainly using those deal and account health scores, to anticipate, which accounts you can grow to really understand those deal risks that might be deal blockers. But really put those people and those pain points first above those features.

Mistake number two, don’t just stop it insights: make insights actionable. Conversation and revenue intelligence are engines and their engines that need to ultimately power behavior change.

If you really want to maximize revenue growth and help your team win more. Insights only go so far right? We need to intelligently, as I mentioned, recommend content and training that’s going to help the rep work that deal or work that account better.

We need to give front-line managers tools to coach and sales enablement, teams, tools to bring in those best-in-class call examples, you know, to really train people. And a lot of times these these platforms are a really good way to measure the ROI of your enablement and your marketing efforts. So don’t just stop it insights make them actionable.

Tip number three, don’t just stop at the deal level. Think about the account-level view. A lot of products in this space just about deal coaching. They don’t factor in very complex enterprise, customized Salesforce instances or CRMs. They don’t let you manage multiple opportunities and ladder them up to a single account view.

But we are in the world of ABM marketing and ABM sales and you really need to give your team all the training content and insights they need to not just close deals but working grow accounts and that includes your CSM and your account growth roles, all of the GTM roles on your team. Right.

Tip number four: don’t undervalue the quality of professional services. Bookmaker rating en.bet-rate.top best bookmakers And so that always starts with looking at the background of the people who are going to support your digital transformation.

And as I mentioned, conversation and revenue intelligence are not going to be working in a silo. So look for people with those backgrounds, but also backgrounds and things like sales, content management, training, enablement – all of the different things that are going to be integrated together to use this insight.

Look at if the company you’re partnering with provides really in-depth customer enablement, user conferences training, and things to get you started with these technologies. Look for things like content-as-a-service. If you are going to go beyond just using the insights to actually chain people look for partners like that.

And most importantly, look at someone who has a really good track record of working with enterprise-size brands to keep compliant managing user permissions and access to things like call recordings and emails. It’s very, very critical that you use the right partner to maintain compliance and in addition, really start to reduce the number of tools your team that that’s a biggie now for chief compliance officers.

So those are my four tips just to repeat them. You know, don’t focus on features focus on people and pain points and the workflows that you’re putting in place really streamlining and simplifying things for them. Don’t just stop at insights, make them actionable. Don’t just stop at the deal level, consider that account level view, and finally do not undervalue the quality of professional services, particularly when it comes to compliance. So I’d love to hear your tips as well please drop them in the comments or feel free to reach out to me and thanks for listening.

Want to learn more about revenue intelligence? Check out more posts from Lindsey outlining what to look for and how to select a revenue intelligence solution.

How Data Axle Shrunk Onboarding Time by 35%

Lindsey Plocek on April 21, 2023



Episode summary

At Data Axle, sales enablement is a crucial focus. However, the team needed a modern solution to deliver onboarding and ongoing training. Sal Pecoraro, SVP, of Client Technology Solutions at Data Axle, outlines how the Data Axle team uses Mindtickle’s complete Revenue Productivity Platform to ensure its sellers are ramped up quickly and always ready to close any deal.

Pecoraro uses Mindtickle to develop the company’s Ideal Rep Profile (IRP), the core set of skills and competencies a rep needs to win. In particular, he talks about how much the team relies on Mindtickle’s Call AI to understand better what’s happening in the field and coach sellers toward better outcomes. In this video, Pecoraro talks about how Data Axle and Mindtickle work to build a sales enablement approach that’s built on data.

Key highlights of Data Axle and Mindtickle partnership

  • The combination of training and using Call AI is powerful: Getting value from listening to calls and getting visibility into keywords, filler words, important terms, and phrases. Helping managers understand what’s happening on calls and where to coach reps.
  • Sellers can focus better during calls: Call AI transcribes calls and identifies sentiment so sellers don’t have to. During calls, they can be more present and can go back afterward into recordings to focus on each part of the sales process. At the same time, other teams have visibility into what’s happening on calls.
  • Call scoring floats good and bad calls to the top of the queue: Because Data Axle gets knows which calls went well and which didn’t, they’re able to work with sellers to course correct where necessary.
  • Defining competencies has been key: The Data Axle team looks at performance on quizzes and certifications and how those same sellers perform in the field. They’re using those insights to drive decision-making about training programs.
  • They’ve seen double-digit improvements: Their onboarding time has shrunk by 30-35% and now that they’re measuring sales readiness, they are confident 80% of their sellers are prepared to sell.

Video transcription

We have our sales executives and our BDR team are both leveraging this system, we found that the combination of the training that we were able to do with it, as well as the call AI, to get some metrics on performance has been really very helpful.

They’re getting some great value out of looking at the statistics like understanding what calls are happening based on keywords, getting some industry standard information back things like speech patterns and filler words, things like keywords that we’ve tagged for important terms and phrases that we’ve been looking for.

And it’s really helping the managers get in there and understand what’s happening to cause and which reps to help and focus on previously, there had to be a lot of translation, people were not really paying attention to the call, they were focused on taking furious notes, they were trying to translate the sentiment of the call. And now they can actually capture the information, focus on the call, have the transcript to go back, and even have the voice conversation, which is searchable.

It helps them go back and focus on the important parts of the sales process and also lets the other teams get the information that they need as well call scoring is great because it floats those good calls and bad calls to the top of the queue. So we’ve got the metrics in place now.

When we see that calls are scored low, we’re able to jump and look at those calls and understand what’s happening. And then, you know, apply the effective measures to correct those on future calls.

We feel like we’ve done a pretty good job of defining the competencies we want our reps to demonstrate. Now we’re in the process of gathering the metrics. I’m excited to know we’ll be able to determine if people have a good understanding of things and perform well on tests, and may not perform well in the real world ongoing in their actual sales performance.

So I think the future is to have a tool like this that can both manage your training, but also call analyze what’s actually happening in real sales, real-world sales calls. It’s something that we’re really becoming dependent on. So it’s a tool that we like we’re adopting more and more.

Me personally, I can’t live without it. It’s something that’s a go-to tool to understand what’s happening and to affect the outcomes. From initially the onboarding process, we’ve seen our onboarding times shrink maybe 30-35% faster onboarding,

Just from having a structured methodology, we find that our training sessions are less haphazard. Adoption is a big KPI. Sales readiness percentage-wise, I think we’re probably in the high 80% right now with sales we feel are qualified.

I give the Mindtickle team five stars. It’s been a fantastic experience.


Want to learn more about the Data Axle story and how they’re simplifying sales enablement and gaining actionable insights with Mindtickle? Download the full Data Axle case study here.

7 Reasons Why Revenue Intelligence Is Your Forecasting Crystal Ball

Lindsey Plocek on November 14, 2022

If sales data consistently led to revenue insights, life would be easier. But after collecting and analyzing sales pipeline data, revenue leaders still struggle to accurately forecast sales.

Why? You need to be able to see into your company’s blind spots. You need to understand why your reps aren’t hitting their quotas. Otherwise, you’ll miss key opportunities to maximize revenue and drive growth.

Mindtickle 2022-2023 Sales Enablement Outlook Report

Revenue intelligence solutions are like a crystal ball. They help you understand the data stored in your CRM, see how your business is doing in real-time across all departments, and accurately predict future sales.

Keep reading to learn more about revenue intelligence and seven reasons why it could be the key to predicting your sales future.

  1. It checks (and reduces) deal risk
  2. It gives you 100% visibility
  3. It forecasts how many deals you’ll close in real time
  4. It tracks historical conversion rates
  5. It increases productivity across your teams
  6. It’s your one source of truth
  7. It reveals your overall business health

What is revenue intelligence?

Revenue intelligence is the collection and analysis of business data to understand the best processes and plays for consistently hitting your revenue goals. It has two key components: deal intelligence and forecast intelligence.

It reviews your calls, emails, meeting invitations, and the contacts associated with them. It looks at your Salesforce instance and the deal health and it shows you with high accuracy the deals that will close, the risks you must overcome,  and how far you are from hitting your numbers.

It gives you a single source of truth for the voice of customer insights in your go-to-market strategy. Not only does that help you measure performance across marketing, sales, and customer success, it helps you interpret and apply that data to improve products and marketing campaigns

Powered by artificial intelligence, revenue intelligence software helps you work smarter. Manual data collection is slow and often inaccurate. Revenue intelligence is able to capture and analyze data from all your go-to-market activities in a fraction of the time, and it eliminates human error. This saves revenue operations teams an average of 30 hours per week on manual work and helps them achieve 95%+ forecast accuracy.

Why is revenue intelligence important for sales teams?

Revenue growth depends on your ability to track deal health and accurately forecast revenue. Only then can you diagnose and improve your sales cadence.

It’s notoriously easy to resort to gut feelings and opinions when building your strategies. Revenue intelligence counters that inclination. It provides 100% visibility into what’s really happening on your sales calls and meetings.

Mindtickle, for example, scores every deal based on the contacts you’ve assigned to that opportunity. It then transcribes and analyzes conversations, giving you insights and key topics customers are talking about.

Your sales team has the information they need to close deals more quickly. That, in turn, helps sales leaders forecast sales more accurately.

It really is like having a crystal ball to gain key insights into what matters most. But there’s no magic here, just rich data and an intelligent system to show you how it impacts your bottom line.

Revenue intelligence helps you get a full picture of the present and read the future in seven important ways.

1. It checks (and reduces) deal risk

Revenue intelligence provides AI-powered risk analysis that helps your teams manage pipeline and close deals more effectively.

It identifies pipeline risks, so you know how to save a deal that’s not moving forward. For example, it can score every deal and alert you to elements that impact their health.

Take multithreading as an example. If you know it takes an average of 14 contacts to win a deal, and you don’t have enough people attached to a deal, revenue intelligence will identify that weakness.

Mindtickle Call AI revenue intelligence screenshot

Who’s involved in the deal? What are their engagement levels? Are they responding to emails? Is the customer sentiment trending negatively?

Without revenue intelligence, managers must trust the rep’s interpretation of deal progress and sentiment. But reps may be focused on one person who’s advocating internally for your solution while ignoring other signals that the deal is stalling.

2. It gives you 100% visibility

Revenue intelligence tracks all scheduled meetings, emails, calls, and what’s said in each channel. It captures sentiment and intent.

This is especially useful for managers because it gives context on how they can help a rep work that deal.

Mindtickle Revenue intelligence buyer engagement screenshot

Reps can easily become overconfident and report the deal is moving forward. Revenue intelligence can track these nuances to identify when a deal is at risk. It then helps you understand how to turn it around.

3. It forecasts how many deals you’ll close in real time

Revenue intelligence provides accurate forecasting information based on real-time data from reps’ engagement with prospects. It uses AI and ML to standardize your sales process, identify trends, and make projections.

Mindtickle revenue intelligence deal risk

Use it to show you where you’re experiencing revenue leakage and which deals are at risk in specific pipeline stages. Or use it for change analysis — where is revenue dipping over the last week or month?

Taking all of this data into account, revenue intelligence gives you an accurate account of how many deals will close and how far you are from hitting your numbers and pipeline goals.

4. It tracks historical conversion rates

Historical data puts current data into context, and revenue intelligence gives you historical conversion rates at the rep, team, and business levels.

Mindtickle revenue intelligence historical data

The data might tell you that Bill wins 7% of his deals while Susie wins 12% of her deals. With this information, you can evaluate your team’s strengths and weaknesses, what’s needed for them to hit their quota, and how you can help. This helps you proactively respond to gaps in your new pipeline.

5. It increases productivity across your teams

Revenue intelligence helps your teams work better and more effectively by helping them set priorities, and focus on the right prospects and sales activities.

Since it uses AI, it automatically collects data from every interaction your reps have with a prospect, including call recordings and emails. That lessens the burden of manual data, and frees your reps to focus on more productive activities: selling, knowledge building, training, and coaching.

Mindtickle Call AI scores screenshot

This improved data gives managers a more comprehensive understanding of how they can coach reps and help them move deals forward. It also helps you predict revenue growth based on your past deal flow.

6. It’s your one source of truth

To work effectively, your team needs all relevant information in a single place. Revenue intelligence software removes the frustration of having to log into multiple tools across multiple departments to gather essential revenue data.

By consolidating marketing, sales, and customer success data into one system, everyone has access to the same information. This reduces the need to reach out to different departments or manually crunch data from disparate sources.

Reps and managers can easily understand the status of deals, who’s involved on the customer side as well as internally, and whether reps are closing deals and hitting quotas.

Let’s say you use MEDDPICC as your sales methodology, and you want to ensure all reps are adhering to it. Revenue intelligence tracks your sales activities to ensure everyone is making the right motions. It predicts how teams and people are likely to perform in the future, who’s going to hit their quota, and who needs more training or coaching in a specific area.

How many leads are coming in from marketing? Who are you handing off new clients to for onboarding and support? All of this information is readily available with revenue intelligence.

7. It reveals your overall business health

Revenue intelligence gives you a real-time view of the health of your business at many levels. It doesn’t just process data, it interprets it, so you know the next steps, historical trends, and performance metrics that impact your decisions.

Revenue intelligence changes the game

Revenue intelligence is a powerful tool to help your organization drive growth and reach its potential. But it shouldn’t work alone. To set up your team for success, you need to combine sales readiness and revenue intelligence.

Mindtickle is the first platform to combine sales readiness and revenue intelligence in one place. That gives you higher data accuracy, easy user interface, more integrations, better customization, and a Readiness Index to predict how your teams are going to perform.

Use the Readiness Index to predict how teams and people are going to perform in the future, who’s going to hit their quota, and who needs more training or coaching in a specific area. That, plus revenue intelligence, gives you the insight you need to empower your entire revenue team.

You can check out all of this with a free, guided product tour and see for yourself how Mindtickle can maximize your revenue and grow your business.

So, You Record Sales Calls. Now Use Revenue Intelligence to Change Behaviors

Lindsey Plocek on September 22, 2022

Now, more than ever, companies need to get ahead of deal risks to avoid budget cuts, hiring and spending freezes, and other impacts of an unstable economy.

Revenue teams must work harder to coach their sales team on skills like how to handle competitor talk tracks, pricing, negotiation, and building an ROI-driven business case.

They need visibility, focus, and confidence that can only be provided through automated insights that help them identify which deals are a priority and the best next steps to take to drive that deal home. They need one source of truth for sales leaders, revenue operations, front-line managers, and reps.

But what’s data if you can’t act on it?

To make a real impact, sales teams need this deal intelligence functionality built into an overall workflow where sellers can find relevant content, training, and tips to close deals faster and easier.

The problem: performance pressure

Sales has always been a notoriously high-pressure job.  Sprinkle in an economic downturn that’s shrinking prospect pools and budgets. Then, layer in hiring freezes that put more pressure on each rep to drive a bigger slice of the revenue pie, and you’ve got high potential to overwhelm even the highest performers on your team. That’s why it’s critical to provide sellers with the help they need the moment they need it. You must make it easy to find the required tools and provide reps with insights that help them personalize the buyer experience and build better relationships.

The solution: revenue intelligence

Revenue intelligence has the power to relieve pressure, not just on sales reps but on entire revenue teams, by providing better visibility, improving team focus, and boosting confidence across the board.

In this article, we explore the ins and outs of revenue intelligence so you can better understand what it is, how it works, and who benefits from it. Here are some key questions this article will answer for you:

Cover of Mindtickle Buyer's Guide to Conversation Intelligence Solutions

Revenue intelligence: what is it and why is it important?

Revenue intelligence provides the deep insights needed to focus sales reps, accurately forecast revenue, and fast-track deals. It gives you complete visibility into your pipeline health and deal risks, such as competitor mentions or objections, so you can provide reps with the coaching, content, and training they need to drive deals forward.

Before the availability of location-based mapping services, such as Google Maps, driving to a new destination was a bit of a crap shoot. Even with a basic idea of how to get where you wanted to go, and a physical map at the ready, an unanticipated traffic snarl or road closure would easily derail your drive and significantly delay your arrival time.

Google Maps changed the game with machine learning and data. It uses various data sources — like satellite imagery, traffic light cameras, and even real-time user feedback — to automatically assist drivers in navigating the fastest route and predict their arrival time with astonishing accuracy.

You can think of revenue intelligence as providing your sales team with a similarly accurate way to reach your revenue goals most efficiently. It’s the compass you can count on even as conditions change in real time.

How does revenue intelligence work?

Revenue intelligence builds on conversation intelligence, which is technology that records, transcribes, and analyzes sales conversations, meetings, and emails.

Revenue intelligence uses AI to analyze all sales interactions with a prospect, predict which deals are going to close, and give you a sense of both deal and account health. Conversation intelligence is a component of revenue intelligence.

A robust revenue intelligence solution should:

  • Forecast sales
  • Score deal and account health
  • Surface key insights from calls, emails, and meetings
  • Identify all at-risk deals
  • Highlight missed opportunities and recommend next steps
  • Provide a holistic view of team skills and competencies
  • Allow reps to curate relevant content for customers in one place
  • Recommend personalized training and content to uplevel skills

Who benefits from revenue intelligence?

The right revenue intelligence solution takes the pressure off your entire team — from the back office to the front lines.

table showing benefits of revenue intelligence

RevOps team

Practice fact-based forecasting. According to Gartner, less than 50% of sales leaders have high confidence in forecasting accuracy. Revenue intelligence provides robust visibility into teams, deals, accounts, and pipeline, freeing your team to rely on quality data to forecast with confidence.

Understand pipeline health. When you can easily visualize how deals are progressing it’s easier to determine whether they’ll close on time.

Simplify workflows. Sales teams have tool fatigue. They don’t want to log into multiple systems to get their work done (and sometimes they simply don’t, which leads to gaps in your data).

The right revenue intelligence solution lets you deliver key functionalities, like sales enablement, content management, conversation intelligence, and coaching, through one integrated platform.

Sales reps

Keep them focused. Your sales reps should be able to see all of their opportunities in one place, including booked, committed, probable, and upside.

Engagement risk scores make it clear who needs to be followed up with most urgently. And the ability to hone in on things, like meetings that have occurred, emails sent, next steps, customer call themes, and in-deal competitive threats, make it obvious where sales reps need to focus their time to achieve their targets.

Screenshot of Mindtickle + BoostUp revenue intelligence solution

Drive the right behaviors. Your reps must continually train and practice the right skills to reinforce key messages and behaviors. (Learn more about the forgetting curve here.)

Boring, one-size-fits-all approaches won’t cut it. Instead, give reps a single location to access personalized training and support. This encourages compliance and reinforces learning, so it becomes second nature to do the right things in the right moments  — even in pressure-cooker situations.

Capitalize on momentum. To keep deals moving forward, make it easy for reps to quickly personalize a deal with content, customer stories, and even a mutual action plan. The ability to see who on the prospect side is interacting with the content delivers an extra layer of insight that helps reps create personalized and timely follow-up messages.

screenshot of BoostUp + Mindtickle revenue intelligence solution

Managers and enablement leaders

Get a singular view of risk profile. Managers should always have a bird’s-eye view of all deals the team is working on, as well as their risk scores.

The ability to zoom in on the deal stage and see specific at-risk deals helps managers see buyer-seller activity, spot check messaging, and even listen to calls. This makes it crystal clear where to step in with support that makes a noticeable difference.

screenshot of Mindtickle + BoostUp revenue intelligence technology

Discover what customers really care about. Say goodbye to guesswork by diving into critical moments in a call, from talk/listen time to prevailing topics and themes. The flexibility to unpack sound bites of interest fuels targeted enablement and better collaboration with product and marketing teams.

Improve sales coaching and readiness. Getting a complete picture of team skills, competencies, and shortcomings helps pinpoint who needs extra support, so you can proactively recommend exercises and content to fill knowledge gaps and create a team of top performers.

screenshot of Mindtickle and BoostUp revenue intelligence solution

How can you pressure-proof your revenue team?

Sales reps are under non-stop pressure to meet (or exceed) their quotas, stop revenue leaks, and be on call 24-7. There’s no doubt that level of pressure degrades peak performance.

Sales teams have many ways to collect data to help them sell smarter — perhaps too many — but if they can’t easily ingest and act on the insights buried within, the data isn’t going to move the needle on performance.

Mindtickle combines revenue intelligence and sales readiness into one platform, giving you one source for deal intelligence to deeply understand team performance, readiness, and skill development.

Want to see it in action? Get a quick demo from our revenue intelligence experts.

There’s a lot riding on your revenue intelligence solution. Watch the video below to discover four mistakes you should avoid when choosing a partner to work with.


FAQs

What is revenue intelligence?

Revenue intelligence provides the deep insights needed to focus sales reps, accurately forecast revenue, and fast-track deals. It gives you complete visibility into your pipeline health and deal risks, such as competitor mentions or objections, so you can provide reps with the coaching, content, and training they need to drive deals forward.

Why are the benefits of revenue intelligence?

Key benefits of revenue intelligence:

  • Data integration: Revenue intelligence frees you from relying on instinct or opinion by integrating sales, operations, and marketing data into a central location so you can get a full picture of every buyer-seller interaction and a deep-dive into every deal.
  • Efficient workflows: It helps your sellers and revenue leaders act on data faster by building insights on things like buyer engagement, objections, and competitor mentions into their overall workflows.
  • Sales readiness: It gives reps easy access to the coaching, content, and training needed to drive deals home.

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