Data-Driven Conversation Analytics Key to B2B Digital Sales

Organizations have started to embrace digital transformation over the past decade – but the pandemic forced companies to adopt these initiatives faster than anticipated. In the blink of an eye, they went from supporting employees who were hybrid or always in-person to entirely remote workforces. There were many enterprise teams impacted by this shift, but B2B sales teams, in particular, were forced to navigate a completely unfamiliar landscape. As such, businesses are turning to conversation analytics to help these teams.

Enterprise sales teams have long relied on face-to-face meetings, in-person visits, and events to nurture relationships and close deals, but when all of that came to a halt (and even as it returned virtually), sales reps had to adapt to continue to drive results.

While some in-person activities are starting to return, a surprising trend has emerged – some prospects actually prefer the digital sales environment. That means Microsoft Teams and Zoom pitches aren’t going anywhere. It’s time enterprise sales teams embrace this next phase of data-driven selling and start leveraging the insights that are held within every prospect or customer conversation to drive better business outcomes.

See also: States Deploy Chatbots to Meet COVID Demands

A digital approach to an evolving industry

Let’s look at some numbers. Recent research shows that approximately 70-80% of B2B decision-makers prefer digital interactions over previous modes of communication. For sales, this means key decision-makers are no longer being influenced by dinner meetings and in-person visits. They are leaning into digital interactions, and sales teams must meet them there.

Gartner also predicts that 60% of B2B sales organizations will transition to a data-driven selling approach by 2025, meaning you’re already behind if your organization hasn’t embraced the selling landscape that the pandemic forced us into.

Why? This digital environment has opened a firehose of data that can be captured and analyzed to give sales teams better insight into what’s working and what’s not. By analyzing digital communications, from emails and chats to video conferences, teams can garner valuable insights at each level of the sales funnel. With knowledge from these conversations, organizations can make data-driven changes, such as improving rep training or updating call scripting, improving sales cycles, increasing win rates, and driving revenue.

Harnessing the power of conversation analytics

Customer and prospect conversations hold a host of valuable data – everything from word choice and tone to competitive mentions and frequent questions – that have the potential to move your business forward. However, uncovering these insights across long, complex sales cycles is hard.

Tools, such as conversation analytics, can automatically analyze customer and prospect conversations and enable sales teams to act quicker and smarter. Imagine a salesperson has a call with a hot prospect and assumes they are considering other vendors but isn’t sure who. With real-time analytics, the second the prospect mentions another vendor, the system can deliver the relevant battlecard to the salesperson while the call is still happening. This in-the-moment guidance can help your sales team better execute during conversations and move prospects to the next step in the sales funnel faster.

Here’s another example. Supervisors often have a hard time understanding why some sales reps are rockstars, and others are barely scraping by. By analyzing emails with successful response rates and phone conversations that advance leads quicker, supervisors can improve coaching and scripting based on top performers. When supervisors have clear insights into rep performance and the behaviors that deliver the best outcomes, they can create more effective teams.

Sales will continue to evolve, but the power of data is here to stay

I have no doubt that the B2B sales landscape will continue to evolve as organizations navigate the future workplace and the era of hybrid work ahead. While the exact future of sales is uncertain, the digital nature of the deal is not going away any time soon.

Sales organizations will continue to generate large amounts of data, particularly from increasingly digital conversations – those that harness the insights from that data to improve performance, processes, and more will be the defining factor between companies that fail and those that are more successful and innovative.