How to Stop Losing Winnable Deals Using Conversation Intelligence

You’ve just had a great conversation with your client and are sure to seal the deal in no time. But as days turns to weeks, you soon realize that the hope is dimming. Suddenly, you observe a close rival had signed the dotted line and you missed your victory by a whisker. What did you do wrong? Is there a way to pinpoint the exact point for you to understand what you could have done differently? If only you could decipher what happened to take the whole effort south. But in the day and age of technology, this is now possible. Enter Conversation Intelligence.

What is Conversation Intelligence?

Conversation intelligence allows you to record and analyze conversations to the last mile and derive crucial insights that are missed but the flow of your emotions during a normal conversation. Conversation intelligence platforms combine the power of ML (machine learning), NLP (natural language processing) and facial coding technology to identify micro-expressions that may get missed in translation in the normal course of an interaction. intent, sentiment and meaning from this conversation data. This makes it possible for organizations to assess their conversation data more deeply and quickly.

In a nutshell, conversational AI (artificial intelligence) helps you gauge intent and sentiments to get insights from virtual conversations.

Here are some ways to apply conversational intelligence in your business:

1. Look beyond conventional virtual meetings

Virtual meeting tools enable you to record conversations and review them later. However, unless you have the skills to understand the underlining and unsaid requirements that escape you in a conversation. The real issue is, even if you are an expert, it’s very difficult to catch these details because you are involved and concentrating too hard to close the deal. Conversation intelligence applications help you break the purpose, thoughts and hidden meanings to make an offer that is viable for both parties.

2. Transcription analysis

Transcription helps you put together a next-level proposal. However, with insights from a Conversation intelligence tool, you can further determine the choice of words, and the culture of the company through the tone of voice, which will help you build a compelling argument that makes your deals irresistible to your clients.

3. Volume management

A deal is seldom closed on a single conversation – you have several touchpoints leading up to a deal. Furthermore, there are several such deals across clients that are taking place simultaneously. To derive insights from all of them individually is an arduous task, let alone coming up with consolidated learnings. Conversation intelligence applications enable you to create a repository and give you actionable insights to make a winning deal.

4. Building a winning sales strategy

It’s a half-victory if you only rely on conversations with clients. Learnings from your past sales, customer interactions, market research surveys and internal brainstorming can help you immensely to build a compelling case. To create a holistic pitch, you need to understand key consumer pain points, buying psychology and details of whom you are competing against for the deal. These details need to be shared with your sales teams and key stakeholders in your product and marketing teams for everyone to work towards a common goal.

5. Learn, unlearn and relearn

Wins and losses are a part of the game. What’s more important is to ensure continuous learning through every deal you pitch. If you manage a team, it’s increasingly difficult to shadow conversations to ensure the training and insights reach the last mile. But with conversational intelligence tools, you can manage team outcomes with ease. Your review processes can be streamlined, and the feedback you provide will deal with the crux of issues in your team.

You also have visibility into how each process is being carried out by each member of the team. These include discovery calls, cold calls, sales demos and after-sales surveys. The organization needs to be in sync with all processes. Conversational intelligence helps you with a minute level of visibility to ensure due processes are being followed. It also gives you an idea of which processes are fruitful, and which need to be realigned. Thus, you can ascertain how you can allocate critical roles, by identifying the strengths of each player in your team.

6. Ensure data accuracy

In the age of automation, it’s easy to overlook inputs that get captured in your Client Relationship Management (CRM) tool. But if you rely on manually updating the CRM system, partial or no data impacts the accuracy of your decisions. This issue is amplified if a member of the team goes on a break or there is a handoff mid-project. When new people join your team, it can be difficult for them to ascertain the nature of the conversations and this in turn will result in an unsavory outcome. Delays in action have far-reaching consequences beyond a lost deal.

In such cases, conversation intelligence applications can come to your rescue. The tool can be set up to record, transcribe, summarize and list out key actionable from conversations. Aligning the tools to populate your CRM can help you not just reduce dependency on people, but also help you foster a healthy work culture, especially in a team that’s always working under immense stress.

Whether you’re a technology-first organization or are in the middle of a rapid digitalization journey, pick a conversation intelligence tool that enhances and syncs with your organization’s digital infrastructure. Make an intelligent transition to ensure that you build a smart company and happy employees, which improves the success ratio of the deals you enter.