If you are a salesperson or sales leader and aren’t doing this, you’re missing an opportunity to improve sales performance.
Most salespeople and sales leaders don’t review recordings and transcripts of virtual sales calls, so they aren’t able to provide or receive coaching for one of the essential sales motions – engaging with prospects and customers.
Many companies configure their conferencing solutions (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, etc.) to automatically record all virtual external meetings, so salespeople don’t need to remember to record meetings. Customers and prospects are comfortable with this common practice.
Sales leaders can significantly improve sales coaching outcomes by reviewing call transcripts as part of their coaching process.
Sales reps should also review recordings and transcripts to self-assess their meeting management, interactions, and outcomes.
Analyzing call recordings and transcripts provides valuable insights into the interactions between sales reps and customers, allowing leaders to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Most conferencing solutions enable comments on the recordings, which inform the perspective of others.
Here’s a four-step guide on how sales leaders can leverage call transcripts for more effective sales coaching:
Step 1: Enablement
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Ask the IT organization to configure the conferencing solution to record and transcribe all external virtual meetings automatically. Recording can be turned off by the meeting organizer when they launch the session or at any time during the meeting.
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Huddle with the sales teams to socialize the decision to record virtual meetings and the benefits for reps and sales leaders. Conduct training on accessing and using recordings and transcripts efficiently and effectively. Reviewing a one-hour recording and transcript takes 10-15 minutes.
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Develop a job aid summarizing recording, transcription, and review’s what, why, and how aspects. You’ll need the job aid for new hires and as a refresher for the existing sales team.
Step 2: Planning & Prioritization
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Determine how much time per week to review recordings and transcripts. We recommend starting with 1 hour per salesperson. One hour will allow the review of about four virtual meetings.
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Calendar the time to conduct meeting reviews – It does not get done if it’s not on the calendar.
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Sales reps should also schedule time to review their recording and transcripts.
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Try to select a variety of call scenarios, customer types, and stages of the sales cycle. This ensures a comprehensive understanding of the sales representative’s performance.
Step 3: Review and Analyze
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When reviewing recordings and transcripts, you can search for specific terms but focus on evaluating communication skills, discovery and building the value proposition, closing techniques, rapport building, and active listening.
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Use the comments feature in the transcript to highlight the rep’s performance’s positive and negative aspects. Your feedback should include actionable insights for improvement. Note that each conferencing tool has a different interface for reviews.
Step 4: Coaching & Monitoring
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Use insights from call transcripts to create personalized coaching, development goals, and strategies for the sales rep.
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Regularly review call transcripts and track progress over time. Adjust coaching strategies based on the representative’s evolving skills and the outcomes of coaching sessions.
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Offer resources such as training materials, videos, and best practices to support the representative’s growth. Encourage self-directed learning and improvement.
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Acknowledge and celebrate improvements and successes resulting from the coaching process. Positive reinforcement can boost morale and motivation.
By incorporating call transcript analysis into the sales coaching process, leaders can provide targeted, data-driven feedback and guidance, leading to more effective sales performance and improved outcomes. Sales reps can self-assess as well for self-improvement.