According to Salesforce, simple tasks like data entry and paperwork once took up so many hours that sales teams only spent one third of their time actually making sales. But times are changing. By sprinkling a little artificial intelligence (AI) and automation into the mix, it’s possible to provide some relief. Here, Renaud Charvet, CEO of cloud phone system software provider Ringover, explains how revenue intelligence can elevate every business function.
The future of sales lies in data-driven decision making. Sales teams have an extensive list of tasks to complete to perform well, with the overarching focus on maintaining positive customer relationships. To help alleviate some of the pressure, many are adopting AI-based selling solutions. In fact, according to Gartner, by 2025, it will be the preferred strategy for 75% of sales organisations globally.
Revenue intelligence
Revenue intelligence is the latest AI-based innovation transforming sales teams’ experience. Using a combination of AI algorithms and automation flows, revenue intelligence gives organisations insights across every stage of the revenue life cycle within their company. This insight can be used to guide marketing, sales and finance decisions to ensure all departments are operating as effectively as possible.
What started as conversation intelligence has evolved into a fully-fledged AI sales toolkit. By combining natural language processing, AI and automation, revenue intelligence platforms connect to every member of the sales teams calendar and automatically scan for upcoming meetings, calls or demos with prospects. When an employee begins the call, an AI bot joins as a virtual attendee and automatically records the session.
Then, it transcribes speech to text through natural language processing and uses its AI model to analyse calls and their content to establish what to advise team members to do in order to secure a sale. Backing each decision with data aggregated across every member of the team provide companies with an unprecedented degree of insight into their sales strategy, allowing them to monitor leads, guide individuals on the best course of action and better predict revenue growth.
Benefits for all
It’s not just the sales department that can gain from revenue intelligence, but they’re by far the greatest beneficiary. Sales departments have long struggled with slow onboarding, inconsistent conversations among employees, and difficulty determining which strategies are working. By recording and analysing every call, revenue intelligence captures every customer interaction and applies the AI algorithm to determine the next best action to take. This ensures conversations are consistent regardless of which team member they are talking to, or how much experience they have.
For newer recruits, it facilitates deal coaching. The AI algorithm delivers real-time feedback on what performed well in a call and delivers prescriptive guidance on what should be done next to win the sale. For management, it also provides 100% visibility of a department. Managers can see who and which strategies are performing well and can pay closer attention to team members that may be struggling more.
Enabling access to this data to all departments can help to shape marketing and product strategies too. A transcription of every single customer interaction automatically allows a business to gain an unfiltered insight into customer opinion. This real-time customer feedback can be used to immediately implement changes in go-to-market strategy, project direction and marketing focuses.
From a financial perspective, revenue intelligence’s data-backed strategy allows companies to set forecasts with confidence. There’s no risk that data isn’t accurate as all information is automatically inputted through the platform’s automation flows. This allows financial departments to forecast revenue with greater accuracy and determine more attainable targets backed by a data-led decision-making process.
Consistent cloud calling
To make the most of a revenue intelligence platform, it’s essential to integrate it into a cloud phone system to give teams ultimate visibility over customer conversations. Calls are immediately scanned and highlighted so teams can focus on the main task at hand making sales.
Once a revenue intelligence platform is integrated with a cloud phone system, when a call is started, the AI algorithm and automation flows are triggered to collect all data required from the conversation. By the time the call has ended, team members can access the actionable insights over in their revenue intelligence platform to determine the next step.
Calls remain an essential step in building and maintaining customer relations, adding in a touch of AI and automation can make reps’ day-to-day simpler and freeing up more time to focus on the tasks that matter building relationships and having successful conversations.
The author is Renaud Charvet, CEO of cloud phone system software provider Ringover.
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