How To Choose A Conversation Intelligence Platform

Sellers are no strangers to phone calls. Whether they like it or not, making sales calls is a key part of the job – and essential for hitting their sales targets.

Every conversation between a sales rep and a prospective buyer contains valuable insights. These insights not only help sellers better understand and address buyers’ needs, but they also give sales managers a clear picture of what’s actually happening in the field.

With the right conversation intelligence platform, sellers and sales managers alike can easily tap into these insights to improve buyer experience and sales performance.

There are several conversation intelligence platforms on the market today. While choosing the right conversation intelligence platform can seem daunting, it doesn’t have to be. In this post, we’ll explain what a conversation intelligence platform is, how it can benefit your business, and key factors to consider when choosing the platform that best suits your needs.

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.

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.

8 considerations for choosing a conversation intelligence platform for your business

Investing in a conversation intelligence platform can have a positive impact on your business. But there are many different conversation intelligence platforms on the market today, and they’re not all the same.

It’s important to find a conversation intelligence platform that aligns with the unique needs of your business. To help with this, here are eight factors you’ll need to consider.

Features to look for when considering a conversation intelligence platform

Each conversation intelligence platform comes with a unique set of features and benefits. It’s important to find a solution that aligns with your needs.

That said, there are certain key features any conversation intelligence solution should have. Let’s explore 10 must-haves.

Unlock the call insights you need to close more deals with Mindtickle

Sales conversations are full of insights that can help you improve buyer experience and sales performance. With the right conversation intelligence platform, you can unlock the insights you need to understand your buyers and deliver experiences that align with their expectations.

But chances are, you’ve already got several tools in your sales tech stack. Rather than adding a stand-alone conversation intelligence solution to the mix, consider investing in an integrated revenue enablement platform with conversation intelligence tools.

Mindtickle is an award winning revenue enablement platform with conversation intelligence tools built right in. With Mindtickle, your sellers always have easy access to the training, content, call insights, and coaching they need – all in one place. That means sellers can spend less time searching for what they need and more time delivering outstanding experiences that win buyers.

This post was originally published in January 2023 and was updated in January 2024 and March 2025.