Seth Marrs: Hello everyone and
welcome back to the Innovative
Revenue Leader Podcast.
So today I'm going to be talking
about conversation intelligence.
And the reason I'm talking about
this right now is next week
we're going to talk about some
of the predictions for 2026,
which are for in sales, which
are undoubtedly going to have a
ton of AI in it, a ton of
discussions around how you get
the most out of it.
And then following that, we're
going to do a four-week series
around agents and what they mean
to B2B revenue, how well how you
can leverage them, have some
guests on that can talk about
it.
But foundationally, none of this
stuff works if you're not able
to capture a conversation
between a buyer and a seller.
So anybody who's out there
that's that's trying to
implement an AI initiative, and
your tech department is saying
you can't capture and analyze
conversations, you really can't.
You can't do AI really well.
You can't leverage these tools
to their greatest and like
capabilities if you're not
capturing conversation.
That is the fuel that will
generate the majority of the
value.
It doesn't mean that it's all of
the value, but if you really
want to understand what's going
on and really drive improved
effectiveness with your sales
team, you need these types of
tools.
So I just wanted to take a step
back in this series and talk to
what this is.
So a little history for me.
I've been covering conversation
intelligence type tools for six
plus years.
I wrote the first Forester Wave
on it, which was an evaluative
report along with a colleague
named Shell Carlson.
And we wrote it on B2B revenue,
say B2B and B2C sales and
marketing.
And then I've probably done five
or six evaluative reports around
it.
I spent a year writing on this.
It's something that I've I've
held very closely to and find a
lot of value in.
It's also a category/slash
feature that a lot of people
don't understand.
So hopefully in this episode, I
can talk you through some of
that, give you a feel for some
of the things that are going on
in it.
And I think the best place to
start is a definition like what
is conversation intelligence.
So some people just think that's
the tool I use to record my
calls.
That's not if that's all you
think it is, then then this
definition to you is very much
basically a web conferencing
platform.
But conversation intelligence
basically uses AI to turn a
conversation into a form that
allows an LLM to go over the top
of it, ask questions to it, and
drive insights back, but allow
you to improve effectiveness,
understand things that you
couldn't see before.
So the art of selling was
basically the dialogue happening
between the buyer and the seller
that, when captured, can
actually be turned into a
science and used to drive
insights that most importantly
can be redirected back to the
seller to help them improve, not
redirected into your leader or
someone to be able to criticize
or give you insights around the
forecast, although those things
are possible.
The biggest value is really in
the seller getting insights that
didn't that they didn't have
before.
And it allows for you to magnify
or improve your trade like
you've never been able to do
before.
So that's what conversation has
the basic definition.
When I talk about it, that's
that's what I mean by that.
So why is it critical?
If you think about the lifeblood
of a seller, it's buyer-seller
conversations, that's where
deals are won.
If you're in a competitive deal,
the ability to engage and
properly talk to a customer
around positioning, around
influencing, all of that stuff
is where the magic happens in
sales.
These tools are a part of
understanding that.
So that's the only way that you
can do it.
Like you have to analyze those
conversations.
And you want to understand what
that looks like so you can
improve it and create that cycle
back to be able to ensure that
when you're in front of a
customer, you get the most out
of it.
And you can't take advantage,
like I said earlier, of any of
these AI tools that are looking
at conversations if you don't
have a conversation to actually
record.
So conversation intelligence is
that tool.
And whether that's embedded in
your CRM, it's embedded in your
web conferencing platform, or
you're buying a tool
specifically, a note taker or
whatever, you need that to be
able to fuel your AI
initiatives.
So that's why it's important to
talk to it today.
So just foundationally, if you
think about conversation
intelligence vendors, I usually
break them into three different
types because there's different
aspirations.
For some reason, people don't
think of web conferencing
platforms like Teams and Zoom
are a conversation intelligence
tool.
They are, they're lightweight in
terms of their focus, but they
have a lot of the capabilities.
Really, the only difference with
a lot of them is they don't have
a bot, which means they can't
join every call.
You can only do the recording on
your particular call.
Zoom actually does have a bot,
so you could you could use it
for both.
So Zoom kind of is set up as a
way to be a note taker as well.
Note taker is really a bot that
can come on and and really
handle any call.
So and they're more focused on
being a good note taker, so they
do things like summaries really
well and other stuff that you
would have in notes that are
beyond just all the
infrastructure of recording the
call.
So that that's another segment
of it.
And then you have another
segment that's very revenue
focused, and those are the
revenue orchestration platforms.
The vendors in that space are
really focused on how do I
tackle the sales use case.
That means their models are very
focused on sales and revenue,
that the tools that they put
around it, the integrations they
have, the data and how they mix
it together are very much
focused on revenue.
But depending on where you are,
so if you're sitting there
going, I don't have an
orchestration tool like a gong
or momentum or tension, um, all
I have is Zoom, there are things
you can do with that that would
be valuable.
Maybe can't get you to where you
want to go with some of the
bigger stuff, but it no matter
what tool you have, and I would
all but guarantee everybody has
at least one type of tool,
whether you just have a web
conferencing platform or an
orchestration tool, that's what
you need to use as your capture
engine to be able to start
deriving insights.
So next the next thing I want to
talk through is just eight
features that that you really
need to understand when you're
thinking about conversation
intelligence.
And I want to give you a flavor
of like low qual, like like low
feature level versus medium
versus high, and just talk to
that a little bit.
So I'll go through some of these
features so you have a feel when
you're thinking about these
tools, what what you should you
be looking for and what's
important.
First, and this is this is the
part that people don't look at
is how do you associate those
conversations to the right place
so you can analyze them in
context.
So, for example, if I want to
understand what's going on in an
account, my conversations all
need to be associated to that
account.
So if you don't have like a
low-level tool would not have or
would have just basic
association.
I take the domain name and I put
it onto an account, and however
many accounts have that domain,
all my interactions are kind of
copied over there.
That gives you account level.
It makes it really hard to get
to opportunity level because
there's just not technology to
get it there.
And then you get to kind of the
medium lender level vendors who
will either say, Yeah, just let
CRM do that, which usually,
unless you put a lot of work
into your CRM association is
pretty poor.
Um, but that's taking something
as simple as saying, oh, I'm
gonna take a contact, and if you
attach a contact to the if I
take a contact to put it on the
opportunity, I'm just gonna flow
all those in.
So only the ones with those
contacts will be on those
opportunities.
That's great.
The other thing you have to do
in those tools is you have to do
auto association, so you don't
let the seller assign the
contact.
If they're on a web conference,
you associate everybody in that
contact to the opportunity.
Not as it's it's not perfect,
but it's better.
And then the high-level ones
provide a fairly detailed level
of sophistication to help you
unpick the challenges that you
have in a complex organization.
Like an enterprise organization,
like if you do domain level, you
could have eight accounts with
the same, you could have
hundreds of accounts with the
same domain.
Think of like a Walmart and the
number of accounts that you
would have there.
So you need sophistication to
understand, to be able to wait
based on last email came in
versus at most active on the
opportunity on the different
accounts, meaning, you know,
there's been a lot of activity
on this account and none on
these 300.
So I know that, so I'm going to
put the opportunities there.
So I say this, and it's probably
the most boring part that nobody
looks at, but the most critical.
You can get yourself to like 60,
70% if you're just doing basic
association, get yourself to
like 80% if you're doing the
contact flow through, and then
get yourself into 90, 95% if
you're doing like the high-level
architectural stuff where you're
really aligning it.
Um think about that.
That's really important.
There isn't a perfect solution
yet.
What you're going to see over
time is these tools starting to
analyze the call and do
association based on the context
of the call.
That's not too far away.
Um, companies will just need to
build it in, but those
associations go a long way.
Because if you have an
opportunity that has very
targeted conversations that are
on that specific opportunity for
that specific opportunity,
versus a bunch of account level
conversations that may or may
not be relevant, it's very
different than if you just have
like general context.
So it allows you to do more.
It's important if you're not
doing it, you should look into
how I do better association.
What does it look like?
Push your vendors to really
understand that.
Next one is just connecting
conversations.
If you think that this is just
for web conferencing, that is a
very, very small part of it.
You need to have your email and
calendar connected.
I would argue that you need to
have your mobile phone
connected.
If you're doing BYOD, which
almost everybody is, you should
kill that and you should go to a
soft phone where you have the
number assigned by the company
and your sellers need to call
off that number, and there's an
auto record that happens off of
that, or at the very least, an
auto tracking where that call is
updated so you know that a call
happened.
All possible, very few companies
do it.
There are lots of phone
conversations that happened
between a buyer and a seller.
So it despite what people will
say about it going away, if
you're deep in a deal and you
have a good relationship, you're
likely going to pick up the
phone and call that person to
help move that deal forward.
And the other thing is the
in-person side.
It's getting more as sellers get
more comfortable with this
technology and start to realize
how they can get value from it,
they're asking for more.
Let me record a phone call in
person where I put my mobile
phone down.
Tools have that where you can do
it.
You have like a hacked version
that you could do as well, where
you can just open up your Zoom
and play that one and record it.
But ideally, you'd have
something that would be formally
set up to do it that way because
acoustics and all that stuff
would be a little bit different.
You'd want it to be built for
that purpose, but it it can work
and it and it does work.
And most of these technologies,
they have varying levels of
sophistication.
They're listening for voice to
do voice separation.
So even if there's five people
in a room, some of them can get
actually really good at
identifying those voices and at
properly associating them.
But even if you can't do that,
you'd at least have the
conversation assigned to that
account, that opportunity.
So that allows me to connect
more conversations together.
So I've talked before about how
do you associate them.
Connecting conversations lets
you have broader conversations.
If you are just analyzing off of
web conferencing, it's like
10-15% of the conversations that
are happening.
You've got to get the email and
you need to have calendaring in
so you can see what's going on
when a meeting happened and
there wasn't a recording.
So at least you know a meeting
happened.
Like those types of things.
So you've got to focus on
broadening your conversations.
So those are kind of two
infrastructure things.
Here's some basic stuff.
Like, summaries are obviously
really prevalent now.
Like that's a great tool Jen AI
can do.
It could take a summary from
anything.
Think of these in three
different ways.
So call level, dead easy.
It's one call.
You can get a summary on that.
There's some pretty easy, is
it's it's it's not aggregating
from multiple places or multiple
conversations.
So you'll see that on every
tool.
Every tool has it from web
conferencing on up.
Note takers will do a little bit
more because they understand the
importance of a customized
summary.
So they'll they spend a lot more
effort to build capabilities in
like a FAPAM that has they can
build all these templates
that'll look at it and talk
about it in different ways.
That's that's the next level
type stuff.
And then the other summaries are
when you get to object level, so
account level, opportunity
level, contact level, where you
can aggregate all this stuff
together and get really cool
summaries around what's going on
in the account, what's going on
in the in the opportunity,
what's going on with this
contact.
That sets the foundation for
some game-changing capabilities
around standard things that
sellers have had to do forever,
like account plans.
If I can do an account summary
based on just a request that
aggregates all the
conversations, I don't need I
don't need to do all that stuff
myself.
I can let the tools do it.
Another one is scorecards.
So scorecards have got have
grown in sophistication over the
last, especially in B2B.
B2C, they've been super
sophisticated for a long time,
but now they're getting a lot
more sophisticated.
So base level, like the
low-level ones, will give you
uh, you know, you go tick the
box and the seller listens to
the call and they type it in.
And even that's that's getting
less and less.
I think people have realized
sales leakers won't do that or
won't do that very well.
So even the ones that are doing
that now or providing some sort
of AI recommendation, but that's
basic.
And and another thing you have
to look at is what types of
scoring you could do.
One through ten, one through
five, yes, no, text, any of that
stuff.
But that's base level.
Like base level, you do the
scoring.
Medium level is you'll see
companies that'll do a
pre-configure.
Medic's a classic one.
Everybody can score medic
because it's just very
straightforward to score.
So building a model that can
train to look at it.
Be careful when you have someone
doing medic level deal scoring
versus macro deal scoring.
But the that custom template
that is built for you, the
reason why that's more valuable
is the companies will train it.
They train it, train it, train
it.
So when they give it to you, it
the logic has been proven out
rather than you kind of building
a summary truck, a summary
template on your own, and kind
of it doesn't have the same
training.
So that's the next level.
The highest level one is just
the automated scoring.
You build it, you train it using
prompting or design, any sort of
different things, and it
automatically scores for you.
That is the market where it's
going.
It's getting a lot, lot better.
You can do a ton of stuff.
It's really on you at the level
that you can really train this
to get accurate scores.
So now you're stopping having to
do full call reviews.
You just listen to it and then
understand what the score is,
and you coach off the score, and
you coach off the really good
tools, will take you right to
the snippet and give you
examples that you could look at.
So you're coaching based on
those things.
Another thing is really
straightforward asking questions
to conversations.
So there's varying levels, but
you there's a lot of times you
have a question you want to ask,
you call a person.
I would recommend if you have
these tools, like a gong's
really popular for this, like
just ask questions to it.
Every tool will allow you to ask
a question to a call.
So from web conferencing,
note-kaking up, you can ask a
question to a call and get an
answer.
The next level would be I can
ask a question to an object
where I go to the account and I
ask a question to an account,
ask a question to an
opportunity, ask a question to a
to a contact, and you get an
answer back based on all the
aggregated conversations that
have happened over a period of
time.
The really sophisticated ones
are doing allowing you to ask a
question to your entire data
set.
So I'm asking a question, a
general question, and it
searches the system searches
through, pulls back a response
based on all the objects, all
the data points, that type of
stuff, or a certain set of those
to get a very sophisticated
answer that's looking across
multiple channels, tools, data
sets, all that.
Those are the different levels
there.
Another thing that's really,
really valuable is triggers.
So your ability to set something
up so that I can identify when
it happens on a call.
So you have like the low-level
one would be keywords and
phrases.
That's been around forever.
If a word comes up, flag it.
If a phrase comes up, flag it.
So that's that's fairly
remedial.
But the many of the like web
conferencing, those types of
tools won't have this.
But having just base, this that
works great for like competitor
mentions and those types of
things.
Low level, but that's that
that's what that trigger would
look like.
Medium is the same thing that I
talked about before with with
scorecards.
You do pre-trained triggers.
These companies have figured out
the ones that are most
prevalent.
They build them for you, they're
really good.
You just put them in place and
maybe tune them to your
business.
And then the high-level ones are
doing prompt created triggers,
like where I can go in, build it
out, and ask for exactly what I
want.
So I can get surgical around my
objection for my company and I
want to see it.
And then when it when it sees
it, it flags it and it can
alert, it keeps track of it.
So you can do trending, all of
those types of things.
So really sophisticated, really
valuable.
The next thing is finding
conversations.
This is fairly remedial.
Everyone's gonna have folders
and shares and snippets that you
could do all the way through web
conferencing.
Then you have the medium level
where you take your keywords and
you put them in and you say
these are the things I want you
to look for, and it just kind of
tracks those things so you can
easily find them, similar to
what you see in others, where
you have like a folder and then
you have a keyword, so it allows
you, like you see this in in
like note apps, like ever, like
Evernote or or in any of those,
or OneNote.
And then they're the high-level
ones are the ones that do AI
generate.
They're looking for trends in,
and they start surfacing those
trends up when they see them.
So you'll get really interesting
like triggers or tags that you
may have not have thought of,
but it's coming up over and over
and allows you to do things
around insights that you would
have never done because you
didn't know that was happening,
you didn't know to ask it was
happening.
And then the next thing is
around reporting.
When you think about reporting,
this is this is critically
important for you to understand
what's going on.
The low-level version will do
behavioral stuff.
Everyone does behavioral, your
talk time, your monologues, your
questions, that type of stuff.
Straightforward, every tool will
do that.
The the next level is topic
level.
So when you get to the topics
where it's identifying those
topics and then allowing you to
understand how often they're
happening and reporting them at
the individual person, and so
you can track them.
And then the more the most
sophisticated ones are doing
trending, where I can take all
those triggers and things that
are happening and show you how
they're trending over time.
So as you're training,
maneuvering things around,
making adjustments, you can
watch those numbers go up and
down.
So, really critical to a leader
that's trying to understand the
impact of the things they're
doing.
So you want to have the
trending, you want to have that
visibility.
So those are eight features that
are really critical.
So if you're thinking about like
how do I maximize my ability to
capture conversations and do it
the right way, take those eight
things and evaluate around it
what your current situation has.
So the last thing I want to do
here is just talk about four
things that are going to be
disrupted based on what I just
talked about here.
They're already being disrupted
in a fairly large way.
And you should think about it
when you're looking at this
technology, or you're just
looking about how do I make a
difference with AI in your
company.
First one, the biggest one, is
auto-update of fields.
If you're not currently today
looking for a way to have your
sellers stop inputting data into
CRM, that is a mistake because
the technology is getting to the
point where you could do some
some really, really cool stuff.
Companies like win.ai have been
have been working on this for
years and are getting pretty
good at it.
Gonk just released something or
with data extractor around this
where you can just have the
conversation analyze and apply
it to a field.
At first, this has been around
forever where you can just take
text and then throw the text
into a field in CRM, but now
it's getting sophisticated
enough that you could identify
it and use a list of values.
You can identify it and say this
means yes or no, and then you
can update everything.
So if you're looking for the a
gigantic way to get efficiency
and then a better understanding
of deals, you should be in you
should be investigating this
heavily and working like crazy
to get your sellers out of data
entry.
Just think of things like stage
progression.
Anyone like stage progression
has been garbage for years, it
doesn't work, sellers don't
update it.
This would allow you to actually
use stage progression because
it'd be happened automatically
based on the conversation.
And it'll also allow you to do
stage regression where when you
see things not happen, you could
draw it back.
So it'd make that staging really
valuable and also really
valuable for partnership with
sales and marketing, because
that's a important staging is
really important in that
relationship.
So they this is probably the
most like early stage of the
ones I'll talk about, but
absolutely critical, and you
should absolutely be
experimenting with it.
Next one is deal visibility.
This one's been around for a
long time, but your ability to
understand the conversations and
have it map it to your
qualification details to how how
you look at the questioning to
understand and say, Oh, what's
my like you can use medic, you
can use anything like that,
where you're trying to
understand if you've qualified
the customer.
That's been around for a while.
It's fairly, it's probably the
it's probably the most advanced
in terms of people using it, but
you should be using this to
determine your whether your
sales team has done the
qualification, has done the work
that they they needed to do and
have it as part of your
forecasting.
That's probably the nuance for
me is a lot of people weren't
using it for forecasting and now
a lot of a lot are starting to
realize wait, I can get a lot of
value from pulling conversations
into under better understand
where my deals are and which
ones they're going to close.
The third one's account planning
if you're still having your
seller like spend a week and a
half updating a spreadsheet or a
PowerPoint or something to be
able to create their account
plans you are wasting a ton of
time and your account plans
aren't sustainable.
In the past you'd have like big
organizations with big high
level accounts that are that you
would do that for sellers would
do it, take forever to do it,
pitch it, and then never touch
it again because they can't they
don't have the time to with
conversation intelligence and
these tools you can just set the
structure up and allow that to
be on demand.
So you can do it for every
account you put click a button
and it pulls up your account
plan then the seller just
provides their input and then
they get inputs back.
Because if you set the account
plan up it should be insightful
for the seller too.
That's changing the entire game
on how account clients and to me
it it should spark a renaissance
in use.
It may not spark a renaissance
in vendors but it'll be a key
feature in any tool that is
working to uh support an
enterprise organization because
any big enterprise will have
these types of account plans or
at least aspire to have them and
out and have them for for real.
And then the the the final one
is this pre-call prep.
If you don't use this for
pre-call prep then you're
wasting a lot of your seller's
time.
Actually you're probably not
wasting your seller's time your
seller's probably not doing it.
And then if you're going up
against a seller where you have
a button that can click and
it'll go pre-call prep for you
and bring everything in in the
conversation and say what's
going on think about if you're a
seller that has that going up
against a seller who doesn't
who's just kind of trying to
figure it all out and doesn't
know all this stuff and can't go
in and get it you're gonna
you're gonna struggle to
represent yourself at the same
level as those who have a tool
like this that that would allow
you to do it.
So those are the four areas to
to just to recap from the reason
why I'm talking conversation
intelligence now and these
important features is kind of
set us up for what's coming in
the prediction side and what's
coming on the agent side because
you're gonna see a lot of
different stuff and things that
are going to be really cool and
where things are going.
But foundationally the easiest
thing to do right now is and the
must do if you want any of this
stuff to actually be real is you
have to you have to find a way
to get your conversations
captured and to have a plan to
understand how to analyze use
the capabilities that already
exist today.
I hope this was was useful and
we'll talk to you next week