How Sales Call Recording Can Improve Your Sales Team’s Performance

Your sales calls are a treasure trove hiding in plain sight. It can give you key insight into customer satisfaction, buyer momentum, and your sales team’s performance. Not recording your calls is like never opening that treasure chest despite possessing the key.

Sales calls are an invaluable resource both in terms of training your sales team to drive metrics as well as offering you critical insight into how they’re faring on the ground.

But all this is only possible if you record sales calls. 

Here, we discuss everything you need to know about sales call recording, including leading solutions in the market and best practices.

Why Do You Need to Record Sales Calls?

But why record your sales calls? Sure, sales reps can rely on their memory or jot down quick notes during sales calls, right?  But it depends on how much sales call data you’re willing to risk. 

You see, your sales team might be experienced and well-trained. But expecting them to recognize key insights and take down notes during sales calls while making their best pitch is frankly wishful thinking.

Let’s break this down a little. During a sales call, your rep is conversing with the prospect, learning more about them to steer the conversation in a favorable direction. But if they start focusing on jotting down notes during the call to record all important information, their attention is going to be seriously divided between note-taking and holding the conversation. Consequently, they can’t focus on crucial activities like rapport building and objection handling. The result? Closed-lost deals. 

Another side of things is the fact that their haphazardly jotted down notes will be incomplete information. Feed that into the CRM, and you’re in for a domino effect that will not only lead to the deal getting lost but also hamper the sales manager’s ability to forecast sales. 

In short, recording your sales call is the only way you’re getting every last drop of sales knowledge you need to drive performance. Not only that, sales call recording brings the following benefits to the table as well.  

• Acts As a Training Resource

Sales call recording allows trainees to listen to real-life sales calls, giving them a front-row seat into sales call techniques and sales objection handling. Not only that, a recording also helps sales managers evaluate their team and provide constructive feedback for continuous improvement.

• Helps Sales Teams Strategize Their Sales Pitch Better

Sales call recording also allows sales teams to gain a deeper understanding of customer insights, including behaviors, preferences, and pain points. This, in turn, helps them tweak their call approaches and scripts to drive meeting bookings and conversion rates. 

• Helps Identify and Avoid Common Sales Mistakes

There’s nothing better than revisiting sales calls to understand why something worked and why something didn’t. Sales call recording allows your team to recognize common mistakes in time to avoid them from seriously affecting your sales numbers. For instance, are sales reps following the ideal talk-to-listen ratio? Are they able to engage prospects in a meaningful conversation without sounding pushy or too salesy? Are they addressing common sales objections effectively or just brushing them off? You can gain answers to these questions with sales call recording. 

How Call Recording Benefits Sales Reps

Sales call recording is a helpful resource for the entire sales team. But within the sales team, it is of special significance to the front-line soldiers, i.e., sales reps. Being the ones directly in contact with prospects and on the outbound call, a recording of the sales call allows them to reflect on sales conversations and gain valuable feedback and insight. 

Here’s a look at how sales call recording benefits sales reps. 

1. Upgrade Your Sales Techniques

Sales reps should record sales calls for the simple reason that it allows them to examine their approach and techniques to recognize and improve their efforts. Reps often have to think on their feet to tackle sales objections and prospect queries during calls. After all, every sales call is fresh, and even an experienced sales rep faces their share of curve balls on an average Wednesday. 

However, recorded sales calls allows them to return to past conversations with a fresh mind and dissect exactly why the sales conversation didn’t have its desired effect. For instance, they could use it to analyze their sales objection handling skills, talk-to-listen ratio, or even how they could have responded better to a negative or aggressive comment from the prospect. Reflecting back on these will allow them to take a more targeted sales approach to improving their sales techniques. 

2. Refer for Future Calls

Let’s say your prospect raises a question that you know you’ve tackled before, but you just can’t remember how. At times like this, you might sift through your notes, check with colleagues, or maybe ask your sales manager how to tackle it again. 

All three options are plausible, but it won’t take out that nagging feeling at the back of your mind that fast. But you know what will? Replaying old sales call recordings to jog your memory.       

Sales call recordings are a great resource to better prepare for the future without having to risk actual prospect conversations. 

3. Retrieve Prospect Details That You Missed

That scene from Erin Brockovich, where  Julia Roberts rattles off the details of each plaintiff without batting an eyelid, was iconic for a reason.

To remember the tiniest relevant detail on your potential customer and what was discussed during one sales call is no joke. But retaining the details of dozens of sales calls?  That is not quite possible in real life, even if you are Julia Roberts. 

But that’s no excuse. Not while you can record your sales calls. By doing so, you’re ensuring all pertinent prospect details are safe and ready to be leveraged. All you have to do is simply access the recording, and voila, you’ve got all the necessary customer details to have a fruitful sales call. 

How Call Recording Empowers Sales Managers

Sales call recordings are an irreplaceable resource for sales managers as well. These recordings allow sales managers to gain a realistic view of the ground reality, whether it's their sales team’s ability to tackle sales calls or changes in customer behaviors and buying patterns. 

Here’s a look at how sales call recording helps sales managers. 

1. Train Your New Sales Reps

“This call may be monitored and recorded for record-keeping, training, and quality assurance purposes.” Raise your hand if you’ve heard this while waiting to connect with customer care.

Ever since recording calls became a practice, businesses have been recording their customer interactions to help train new employees. And who can blame them? There is nothing better than past sales call recordings to make trainees understand how the job is done and reduce the learning curve.

Recording sales calls helps sales managers pinpoint problematic behaviors, such as a monologue, brushing off a sales objection, or sounding overly salesy. At the same time, it helps them identify winning techniques as well, such as adding details about the prospect’s competitors to show they’ve done their homework or adding a personal touch by talking about a shared hobby or experience. For sales managers, these audio recordings could help further the learnings of new sales reps. 

2. Coach Your Sales Team Effectively

Colin Mitchell, VP of Sales at Leadium, says, “The only way to get better is to review your calls by recording them.” Sales call recording allows sales managers to evaluate and analyze their sales team more thoroughly than by simply sitting in on their calls and taking notes. Why?

Because going through your sales rep’s recordings allows you to listen patiently and mark areas of improvement whilst ensuring they aren’t distracted during the call. After all, if they know you’re actively listening to how they’re pitching to the prospect, breaking a sweat or two and stumbling on their words is but natural.

To get a more accurate picture of how your sales reps are performing, recording sales calls is best. By doing this, you understand the exact problem areas for each sales rep as well as their strengths, allowing you to examine the best way to coach them and help them grow. Further, this also allows you to set benchmarks for performance and better judge how fast individual sales reps are improving. 

3. Improve Your Product With New Ideas

As a sales manager, you’re likely far from the action. This means you might not always have the latest feel of what prospects are looking for or how your product is doing among the masses. 

You see, when it comes to sales, teams often forget that it’s not just pitching but also gathering intel. Being in direct contact with prospects, sales teams are in a unique position to get the pulse of the market and offer valuable insight into product development. 

And while sales reps must focus on crushing their quotas, sales managers must look at the big picture and how best to drive sales metrics. Sales call recording can help sales managers understand shifting market dynamics, know how their competitors are faring, and gain insight into the voice of the customer (VoC). Based on these, you can provide valuable recommendations to the CEO and the Product development team to improve your solution, refine sales strategy and gain an edge over your competition. 

4. Resolve Disputes

Sales call recordings also act as proof and evidence in case of disputes with prospects. Allowing sales managers to replay sales calls empowers them to gain a clear and accurate understanding of the situation, thereby helping them in dispute resolution.

For instance, a sales rep offers a discount on a subscription for the product if the prospect chooses to sign up for a year straight away. However, the prospect misunderstands that the discount is available regardless of the time frame of the subscription. In such a case, sales call recordings can be helpful in learning whether it was poor communication on the rep’s part or a simple misunderstanding. And further, enhance customer experience. 

5 Best Sales Call Recording Software for Sales Success

When we talk about sales call recording software, we aren’t referring to simple call recording capabilities that most cell phones offer today. That’s because call recording solutions go far beyond just offering you a way to replay the sales call. 

These sophisticated solutions leverage conversation intelligence (CI). CI uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze sales calls in order to derive data-driven insights from your team’s sales outreach efforts. In other words, these solutions don’t just record but also transcribe, facilitate improved note-taking, summarize key call events, and organize all sales call information in one place for the entire sales team.

And to help you find the best one for your sales outreach, here are the top 5 sales call recording software to drive sales metrics:

1. Call IQ

Klenty’s Call IQ captures, transcribes, analyzes, and offers actionable insights on every customer interaction your sales rep undertakes. Further, its powerful summarization capabilities and seamless integrations offer sales managers a quick rundown of all sales calls within minutes.

Features

• Calendar Integration

Klenty’s Call IQ integrates with Google and Outlook Calendar to help sales reps organize meetings and calls in one place. This provides them with greater transparency and clarity. 

• AI-Generated Call Summaries

Call IQ offers four AI-generated call summaries for maximum clarity. Its Spotlight Summaries offer a bird’s eye view by highlighting the important aspects of the call. The Action Items summarize the next steps discussed on the call. The Questions Asked summary offers you a list of all questions raised during the call. And lastly, the Sentiments summary lets you know the positive and negative sentiments picked up during the sales call. 

• Generates Sales Call Transcripts

Call IQ transcribes all sales calls in less than 5 minutes. This helps sales managers gain a quick understanding of what transpired during the sales call by simply skimming the transcription instead of listening to every second of the recording.

• Talk Time Metrics

Call IQ also offers insight into how much each speaker spoke during the sales call. This helps sales managers understand whether there was a healthy conversation between the rep and the prospect instead of a boring one-sided monologue.

• Seamless Integration with CRM System

Call IQ keeps your CRM in the know. This tool saves all call details in your CRM system so that your sales reps can keep their focus on the conversation rather than jotting down highlights.

• Central Repository

Whether you’re making your sales calls through the Klenty Dialer, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, or any other platform, Call IQ maintains a central repository of all audio and video calls in its searchable and filterable call library for easy and quick access. 

Pricing

• Starter Plan starts at $20 per user, billed annually.
• Pro Plan starts at $40 per user, billed annually.

2. Gong

This Revenue Intelligence platform empowers sales teams to capture, analyze, and apply accurate insights from customer interactions on a single platform. Gong achieves this with its proprietary AI technology that isn’t limited to phone calls but extends to emails, video calls, and all platforms that your sales reps are leveraging to interact with prospects.

Features

• Comprehensive View of Your Sales Outreach

Gong offers a holistic overview of all your sales outreach efforts. This not only includes your sales calls but video calls, emails, social media correspondence, etc., as well. 

• Seamless Integration 

Gong offers over 100 integrations, including platforms like Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Cognism, and Gainsight. This ensures your team doesn’t waste time jumping between solutions.

• Personalized Guidance

Gong offers a customized user experience by offering insight into coaching opportunities, deals that sales reps should prioritize, and how your team can improve their forecasting abilities. 

Pricing

Gong customizes its pricing based on factors unique to your sales team. All you have to do is visit their website and feed in information about your company size and how you make your sales. Gong will revert back to you to take things forward from there. 

3. Chorus by ZoomInfo

Chorus allows sales teams to record and analyze sales calls and emails to facilitate greater visibility and increased efficiency in sales processes. Further, its AI-driven trackers ensure you record even the smallest detail of the sales call.

Features

• Deal Update

Integrates with your sales team’s CRM and helps you monitor the deal’s momentum by analyzing prospects and sales opportunities effectively. 

• Coaching Opportunities

Identifies coaching opportunities and facilitates improved sales training by allowing trainees to shadow sales calls virtually. 

• Market Insight

Chorus keeps track of how often competitors and particular product features are mentioned during a sales call to offer a deeper understanding of customer preferences, behaviors, etc.  

Pricing

Chorus offers personalized pricing for every sales team. All you have to do is share your email, and Chorus will get in touch with you. 

4. Avoma

This AI-driven recording tool, transcribes, and summarizes sales calls to drive sales efficiency. Further, its targeted insights allow sales leaders to understand the gist of each call without having to sit and listen to each one.

Features

• Team-Wide Note Editing

Avoma indexes sales calls under categories like customer pain points, business needs, and the like to offer greater context to the listener without requiring them to replay the entire sales call.

• Team-Wide Note Editing

Your sales team can view, take, and edit notes together in real time using Avoma. The solution also tracks notes with time stamps and links them to the sales call in question.

• Conversation Insights

Avoma also allows sales reps to gain insight into their own functioning by offering data on the most used words during phone interactions, lengthiest monologues, etc. 

Pricing

• Basic plan at no charge.
• Starter plan at $19/month, per user, billed annually.
• Plus plan at $49/month, per user, billed annually.
• Business plan at $79/month per user, billed annually.
• Enterprise plan at $149/month, per user, billed annually.

5. Clari Copilot

Previously known as Wingman, Clari Copilot allows sales teams to capture and analyze sales conversations. Not only that, it also highlights key insights to help your sales team gain quick and accurate information in a matter of seconds.

Features 

• Monitors Revenue

This solution allows your sales team to gain a better understanding of their revenue estimates by tracking the stages of the deal.

• Call Insights

Clari Copilot analyzes sales calls and takes notes of whether the prospect mentions competitors, any potential blockers, and other relevant information to help sales reps make more informed decisions. 

• AI-Driven Sales Call Summaries

Clari Copilot leverages AI to offer sales call summaries, suggested actions, and next steps discussed during the call right to your Slack.

Pricing

• Accelerator plan at $1080/rep annually.
• Enterprise plan at $1320/rep annually.

Best Practices for Sales Call Recording

Now that you know the benefits of sales call recording and the top 5 solutions available in the market, it's time to discuss how you can gain the most out of it. Here are three important points to keep in mind while recording sales calls. 

1. Ensure Compliance With Local Laws

Before you start recording a call, know the sales call recording laws that apply to your prospect’s location. Since these may differ depending on location, be sure to consult a legal professional to ensure your sales call recording is lawful and consensual.                 

This doesn’t only include the sales calls but other activities related to it as well. These include informing your prospect that the sales call is getting recorded, taking required measures to ensure data security and the like. Some local laws require just one-party consent (only reps need to know the call is being recorded), while other locations mandate two-party consent (both reps and prospects must consent to the call being recorded). So, it’s always best to get your prospect’s consent. This brings us to our next point.

2. Secure the Consent of Prospects

Gaining your prospect’s consent to record the sales call may not just be polite but even mandatory in some situations. And so, make sure you’re working in tandem with the law of the land where your prospect is located. 

For instance, if your prospect is in the US, your first step must be to ascertain whether the prospect’s state requires one-party, two-party, or mixed consent. 

If your prospect belongs to the EU, you’ll have to adhere to the GDPR guidelines when it comes to consent. That means justifying why you need to record the call and gaining unambiguous consent for the same. Be sure to check the consent laws before recording a sales call. 

3. Keep the Sales Call Recordings Safe

On the face of it, your sales call recordings might not seem sensitive. After all, they’re just call recordings, right? Wrong. Your sales call recordings often include personal prospect data as well as sensitive company data that might be at risk in the wrong hands. And so, be sure to keep all your sales call recordings safe and secure. Here are some ways you can ensure this. 

• Restrict access to recordings to sales managers or select sales reps.
• Educate the sales team on privacy and security policies.
• Update your security settings regularly. 
• Edit recordings to remove the prospect’s sensitive data.

By taking the above measures, you can rest assured your sales call recordings remain safe and secure.

FAQs