Stepping into your newly appointed sales leadership role comes with high expectations. You need to drive revenue, improve rep performance, and build a culture of accountability. But if you’re flying blind, without visibility into your team's conversations and pipeline, your impact will be limited.
That’s where conversation intelligence comes in.
Far more than just a call recorder, conversation intelligence (CI) tools transcribe, analyze, and deliver insights from your team’s sales calls. They surface what’s working, where deals go off track, and how individual reps are performing. In short: they give you the visibility and structure to lead with confidence.
But with so many platforms on the market, how do you choose the right one?
After years of helping sales leaders adopt conversation intelligence, I’ve learned what really matters, especially when you’re new in the role and need to hit the ground running. This guide will walk you through the key considerations so you can invest wisely and start driving results fast.
What this guide covers:
• Defining your goals and use cases
• Integrations with your existing systems
• Keyword and topic tracking
• Coaching and performance improvement
• Reporting and analytics
• Scalability and implementation
• Security, pricing, and support
Before you start shortlisting tools, get crystal clear on why you’re investing in conversation intelligence. Your use cases will shape your criteria.
Typical objectives for new sales leaders include:
• Improving sales coaching and building rep development plans
• Gaining visibility into rep performance and customer conversations
• Reducing admin and improving efficiency by automating note-taking and follow-up
• Spotting deal risks and pipeline gaps early
• Extracting customer insights to feed back to Product, Marketing or CS
Make this a team conversation, include sales managers, ops, and anyone else who will benefit from the data. Alignment now will prevent frustration later.
Your conversation intelligence tool should fit neatly into your current workflow.
Look for seamless integrations with:
• CRM systems like Salesforce or HubSpot
• Video conferencing tools like Zoom or Google Meet
• Dialers or VoIP platforms
• Sales engagement platforms
The smoother the integration, the faster your team gets value. You want call data syncing automatically to your CRM, not creating another manual task.
A CI platform is only as good as its transcription engine. If it can’t accurately pick up what your team and customers are saying, your insights will be flawed.
Look for:
• High-accuracy transcriptionA strong summarization feature can save hours of admin and help you and your reps focus on action, not note-taking.
If you want to align sales with Product, Marketing, and CS, look for robust keyword and topic tracking.
This helps you:
• Identify common objections (e.g., price, competition)
• Spot upsell or cross-sell opportunities
• Share “voice of customer” insights across departments
It’s also a great tool for spotting trends: are customers frequently asking about onboarding? Is one rep consistently triggering "wow" moments?
Pro tip: Set up alerts for terms like “budget,” “training,” “love this,” or “too expensive” to get instant visibility into key themes.
CI platforms are a game-changer for sales coaching, but only if they’re used consistently.
Some tools rely entirely on managers to review and coach every call manually. Others offer AI coaching functionality, suggested talk tracks, or automated scorecards to help reps self-coach and improve faster.
A good CI tool should make your life easier, not harder. You want dashboards and reports that:
• Highlight individual and team performance
• Show trends by call type, deal stage, or rep
• Track adoption and usage across the team
Whether you're reporting to the board, coaching a rep, or refining strategy, this data should be at your fingertips.
Bonus: If other teams like CS or RevOps are using the tool too, check if they can customize views for their needs.
You might be leading a team of 5 today, but what about 50 in a year's time?
Ensure your chosen platform can:
• Handle high call volumes
• Scale across global teams (languages, accents, time zones)
Investing in a tool that grows with you is more cost-effective than switching later.
All the features in the world mean nothing if your team doesn’t use the tool.
Look for:
• Smooth onboarding with support and training
• A clean, user-friendly interface
• Clear value to reps (i.e., saving time or closing more deals)
Ask vendors about typical adoption rates and how they help drive long-term engagement—not just implementation.
Especially if you’re handling customer data, make sure the platform is secure and compliant:
• GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2, or other relevant standards
• Strong data encryption and access controls
• Options for data storage centres
When it comes to pricing, focus on value. Does the platform justify its price with tangible benefits? What support is included during onboarding and after?
Get clear answers on:
• What’s included in each tier
• How pricing scales with team size
• What kind of support (email, live chat, dedicated CSM) you’ll receive
As a new sales leader, visibility is your superpower. Conversation intelligence gives you that visibility and the tools to coach better, scale faster, and close more deals.
By focusing on what matters most - accuracy, integration, coaching capabilities, and usability - you can confidently choose the right platform to support your goals.
Ready to explore how Jiminny supports newly-appointed sales leaders with powerful conversation intelligence?
Book a custom demo here.