Three Reasons Why Sales Managers Should Be Using Speech Analytics

In today’s competitive sales landscape, it’s no longer enough to assume that agents are simply making the right number of dials, especially if you’re managing a dispersed sales team operating out of multiple locations, which makes it difficult to keep track of your team’s activity. Deeper, more complex data is required to make sure a sales team is functioning and executing in the most effective way possible. Luckily, there is now an abundance of advanced sales analytics and tools that give sales managers access to detailed accounts of their teams’ activity. One such tool that shouldn’t be overlooked, however, is speech analytics through call recording.

Sure managers can track data like number of appointments made, number of times the phone rang, and ultimately number of conversions, but these statistics only demonstrate whether something is working or not working. Speech analytics, on the other hand, provide the why behind these results, giving managers of non-centralized sales teams insight into important qualitative elements of the sales process that shape the end results.

Here are the three most powerful benefits speech analytics provides sales mangers.

1. Call Results

Speech analytics can help managers learn why some calls convert and others don’t, and why some agents perform better than others. Companies have the ability to set keywords or phrases that trigger push notifications to immediately alert managers of a conversion.

For example, advanced speech analytics can track adherence to an established script and report an aggregate score in almost real-time. Managers are notified and can intervene instantly if an agent who is missing too many opportunities is varying too much from an approved script. Additionally, managers can be informed right away of a prospect’s competitive mention, or sensitivity to fees and other charges.

2. Lead Scoring

When recording every call agents make, speech analytics tools can track known indicators of high, or low, quality leads such as designated words or phrases, the percentage of silence on a call, or the rate of speech, which enables them to score prospects appropriately. Agents are then able to prioritize leads for follow up, and focus on the best leads first, instead of chasing down every lead only to discover most were casual inquiries.

3. Emotion Alerts

When it’s not the specific words that are causing agents to miss opportunities, but rather their emotional state or their reactions to the emotional state of a prospect, call recording with speech analytics can capture otherwise completely unattainable data. Tone, rate of speech, volume, and silence percentage are all valuable clues as to how an agent interacts with a lead and what additional training might be necessary to improve that agent’s outcomes.

In many cases, the prospect’s reaction on the phone may not be related to the salesperson. If many leads are confused or frustrated on the phone, perhaps there’s a problem with an outbound marketing campaign. The data delivered through call recording and speech analytics helps managers adjust the campaign accordingly in an appropriate amount of time and improve the quality of the leads his or her team is chasing down.

At the end of the day, sales managers of dispersed teams can only be as effective as the tools they use. With call recording and speech analytics, it’s far easier for managers to recognize and reward top talent based on hard data, and provide targeted training and support for struggling agents. Instead of a team with one or two stars, managers can build teams of top performers, vastly improving their overall productivity and effectiveness, and the company’s bottom line.

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