Staying ahead of the competition means embracing data-driven strategies. At Jiminny, we believe conversation intelligence (CI) platforms are a game-changer for sales and revenue teams.
But we know that as a CFO, you need more than just an opinion to justify a decision.
Let's dive into the strategic, operational, and financial benefits of CI, with guidance from our very own CFO, Steve Dunn-Massey.
This guide will show you how conversation intelligence impacts:
Conversion rate
Efficiency
Sales cycles
Revenue performance
Customer retention
Staff onboarding costs
We’ll then share:
The implementation plan
Considerations for you as a CFO
The ROI you can expect
Strategic benefits of conversation intelligence
#1 Data-driven insights improve conversion rate:
Jiminny captures and analyzes every revenue conversation, providing actionable customer insights (needs, preferences, and pain points) and insights into rep behavior and performance. These insights allow your team to tailor their approaches, improving engagement and conversion rates. For example, Jiminny customer, Scoro, achieved 15% higher win rates when reps regularly listened back to and coached from their call recordings.
#2 Enhanced sales coaching:
Jiminny identifies your top performers on the metrics and frameworks relevant to you and analyzes what they do differently. Share these best practices across the team to elevate everyone’s performance. Continuous improvement is key to staying competitive, which is why Jiminny’s AI coaching features help reps learn and develop with every call. Managers can provide targeted coaching based on real data, leading to continuous skill enhancement and better performance.
Tip from Steve: “Continuous, incremental improvement really is the main route to competitive advantage nowadays. With the latest generation of reps hungrier than ever for coaching and professional development, conversation intelligence satisfies strategic business objectives and employee engagement goals too.”
Operational benefits of conversation intelligence
#1 Improved efficiency:
Jiminny provides automated transcription, analysis and summaries after every call, saving significant time spent on manual note-taking and data entry. This crucial work is then logged directly to your CRM so reps can focus on generating revenue.
#2 Enhanced collaboration:
Data-driven coaching insights foster a coaching culture, nurturing collaboration and knowledge sharing within the team. This maximizes the skills and human resources in your team, leading to a unified approach and improved outcomes.
#3 Real-time feedback and adjustment:
Jiminny provides real-time feedback on sales calls, enabling immediate adjustments and improvements so reps can course correct deals that are slipping more efficiently. This agility helps in responding quickly to customer queries or concerns, closing deals faster and reducing your sales cycle.
Tip from Steve: “Operational costs are a constant worry for CFOs. So while you’re likely feeling pressure to reduce tech costs, consider the operational outcomes you are trying to achieve. CRM logging and data hygiene are always of utmost importance, which is why Jiminny integrates with such a range of tools, so you can consolidate as needed while achieving the outcomes your board demands.”
Financial benefits of conversation intelligence
#1 Improved revenue performance:
By improving the effectiveness of sales conversations, Jiminny directly contributes to higher close rates and larger deal sizes. Jiminny customer, Cision, saw a 20% increase in order value while using our conversation intelligence and Connectd saw an 11% increase in ARR.
#2 Reduced churn and enhanced customer retention:
Better understanding of customer needs and improved engagement leads to higher customer satisfaction and retention rates. By flagging churn warning signs and decreasing customer engagement early using conversation intelligence, Lemon.io reduced their customer churn by 37%.
#3 Staff onboarding costs:
By building a bank of your team’s best practice calls (AND objective analysis of why they are the best), conversation intelligence leads to reduced training costs through more efficient and effective training programs. Listening back to these calls also helps new reps better understand customer pain points, concerns and queries, so they can be up and running quicker. Hokodo were able to accelerate speed to productivity for new SDRs to under two weeks of starting.
Tip from Steve: “To me, any new piece of tech should achieve outcomes in at least one of three categories: 1) growing revenue, 2) reducing costs or 3) making life better for employees or customers. Creating your own financial and non-financial metrics in these three categories really helps in weighing up a new tech purchase.”
Implementation plan
The implementation time of a conversation intelligence platform will vary from business to business. The most important elements of implementation are:
- Customization and getting the platform configured bespoke to you and your business operations. The more specifically the functions are aligned to the way you work, the better results and returns you will get.
- Adoption and usage - again, the higher the adoption, the better the results, so communication, training and onboarding are worth the investment of time.
Implementation involved six key phases:
- Information and introductions
- Goal-setting and definitions
- Technical launch
- Customization
- Team launch
- Wrap-up and review
You can find out about these steps in more detail in our implementation guide.
Tip from Steve: “For many sales teams, call recording and conversation intelligence might feel like a big change. You might be cautious and worry your team will consider it micromanagement, resulting in poor adoption and another item of failed tech spend. But from experience, this is always more of a worry for leaders than for reps. With the right communication and onboarding from Jiminny, the response is actually overwhelmingly positive about conversation intelligence due to the time it saves users and the opportunity to improve their performance.”
Considerations
We know that as the CFO, it is your job to scrutinize every item of spend, so here are two considerations to discuss with your team and your conversation intelligence provider to make sure you invest at the right level for your business.
#1 Your number of users
Jiminny is priced per recording user, with free Insights Seats available for users who only need to listen back to calls and see analysis. So take some time to work out exactly who needs to be recording and who doesn’t, as this will dictate the best price for you.
#2 Who is the owner?
Every piece of tech used in a business should have an ‘owner’ - someone who is responsible for its ongoing use and success. When this person leaves, a new owner must be appointed, to make sure tech doesn’t just get stuck on an automatic renewals list without getting used (a tale as old as time!). So when you’re considering which individuals within your team are going to be using and benefiting most from conversation intelligence, always appoint an owner or champion to lead the charge.
ROI
Now, the bit we know you’ve been waiting for; what is the return on investment? As mentioned, conversation intelligence impacts metrics across the organization. We’ve mostly touched on revenue and sales metrics so far, but there are other benefits that can be seen across all business functions. And as you’d expect, the time to ROI will be unique to each and every business.
Tip from Steve: “Once you’ve gone through the list of considerations above, you can quantify exactly how and why ROI of conversation intelligence will be measured for your organization. We’ve helped hundreds of revenue teams improve performance in a quantifiable and tangible way, so our team is well-versed in defining goals and metrics specific to different businesses. I’d urge any CFO to get in touch to find out more and get a custom ROI calculation and business case.”
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