Salespeople engage in conversations every day—with leads, customers, partner organizations, and many others. Every conversation represents an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the person on the other end and the organization they represent.
Historically, most salespeople have relied on notetaking and standard recordings to gather intelligence from these conversations. These processes work, but they’re also time-consuming—salespeople already spend about one-third of their day talking to prospects, 21% of their day writing emails, and 17% of their day entering data, according to HubSpot.
Time-consuming processes make it relatively easy to miss opportunities to uncover intelligence from sales conversations. It can also be difficult to remember and record every detail.
HubSpot recently announced its new conversational intelligence (CI) technology as a solution that can help solve this problem. Although conversational intelligence tools are still relatively new, they are quickly becoming popular among sales teams.
What is Conversational Intelligence?
Conversation intelligence software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically do the following:
- Record calls
- Transcribe calls
- Search recorded calls and transcripts for keywords
- Associate recorded calls and transcripts to a contact’s timeline
- Deliver transcripts to your team via an auto-generated link
You can even use the technology to identify specific parts of a transcript for teaching moments.
The process is simple and intuitive. Even if your salespeople aren’t tech-savvy, they can use this technology as long as they are familiar with HubSpot’s interface.
In the example above, you can see HubSpot’s conversational intelligence tool identifying speakers and providing the user with an easy way to find keywords within the transcript. Here, the user is identifying the brand name of the platform their lead is currently using. Instead of having to rely on memory and notes, the salesperson can enter this information directly into the contact’s profile within HubSpot.
You can access conversational intelligence by navigating to a specific contact and clicking on “Calls.” Once there, you can find a specific call through a title search. This will give you access to the call recording and all the insightful tools associated with HubSpot conversational intelligence.
Setting Up Conversational Intelligence
Before you configure your CI settings, your reps will need to either register your phone number with HubSpot, integrate with a third-party calling provider, or set up HubSpot's integration with Zoom to start making calls.
Be sure leadership understands the recording laws in your state. It’s also a best practice to inform other parties on calls that you are recording and why.
To configure CI settings, go to Settings > Objects > Activities, then click on “Track call and meeting types” and “Allow call recording.” make sure you turn on transcription and analysis as well. See below:
Transcription and analysis are what enable HubSpot to transcribe calls made on the platform or via third-party platforms, such as Zoom. HubSpot will automatically generate a written transcript of the call, search transcripts across calls, and report on keywords mentioned across calls.
Finally, you’ll need to read and approve the following note:
Confer with your legal team or an attorney to ensure you are in compliance with laws and regulations around call recording in your state.
Why is Conversational Intelligence So Important?
If you’ve ever had to record, transcribe, or analyze a phone call, you can already imagine how useful this technology can be. Call volumes are only going to increase, especially as more and more companies engage in remote work and remote sales activities. Conversational intelligence could save your sales team significant time and resources by streamlining the analytical process.
Significant Cost Savings
Companies also spend thousands of dollars each year on other technologies that give them equivalent functionality. Now, you can access the same capabilities through an existing HubSpot subscription—if you’re a Sales Hub Enterprise User, you’re getting a $15,000 value for free.
Useful in Multiple Contexts
This technology can also be used in many other contexts. For example, marketers looking to find the most important points said during a digital presentation or webinar could use conversational intelligence to identify keywords and pull insightful quotes from speakers. This information can then be added to other marketing assets, such as blog posts, white papers, testimonial pages, and more.
Similarly, conversational intelligence makes it easy to coach new salespeople in their sales conversations.
Managers have little precious time to spend shadowing their teams’ sales calls. Conversational intelligence allows them to record calls and zero in on the most important coaching moments. Instead of shadowing a conversation and giving the new salesperson unspecific advice, the coach can listen to a recording and direct the new salesperson to specific moments in the conversation and provide insights into how they can improve.
With the addition of the forecasting tool, sales analytics, and CI, sales managers are going to enjoy coaching their representatives.
Functionality with HubSpot’s Keyword Features
Finally, you can use HubSpot’s conversational intelligence tool in conjunction with the rest of the HubSpot platform. Use it to identify keywords and measure their performance in your digital marketing campaigns. HubSpot has keyword reporting built into this tool, so you can start to understand what keywords and which types of meetings advance an opportunity most effectively.
Eventually, you will likely be able to include these keywords and patterns in calls into your attribution reports. You’ll be able to factor sales conversations into your attribution of marketing efforts.
Take Advantage of HubSpot’s Conversational Intelligence Feature Today
If your salespeople are still recording sales calls on their own, or if they’re still relying on memory and notes to keep track of insights from their calls, HubSpot’s conversational intelligence tool could be a lifesaver.
To get the most out of this technology, we recommend understanding how it can be used across your organization. Aptitude 8 can help you implement HubSpot and show you how insights from conversational intelligence can be leveraged for marketing, service, SEO, and more.
Contact us today to learn more about this amazing tool.
