What is a sales call recording?

Sales calls provide reps with valuable insights on optimizing everything from the sales strategy to the call scripts in real-time.

Recording these calls using a sales enablement or call recording software helps organizations gather the right material to train and coach sales reps so that they master the art and science of selling.

Can you record sales calls?

Every region has its own laws regarding recording calls and data privacy.

According to U.S. Federal Law — U.S. (18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(d)) — you need single-party consent to record calls. The person who consents must be an active participant in the call.

Also, the U.S. state laws vary, and some, like California or Pennsylvania, require multi-party consent — everyone participating must express consent to being recorded.

The international laws vary too. For example, the GDPR requires you to have a legal basis for collecting, storing and sharing the personal data of EU residents.

In most cases, a safe approach is to record calls after getting consent from your sales rep and their prospect. You should also offer a valid reason for recording the call.

Your sales call scripts should weave in the compliance aspect right at the beginning to avoid any conflict. Here are two examples:

Besides a verbal notice, you can also make sure that you use tools compliant with state or regional laws. For example, you can adjust the settings of your call recording software so that it automatically requests consent.

Why should you record sales calls?

With sales call recordings comes great insights, and with great insights come great sales. You should record sales calls to master:

• The art of sales coaching
• The science of sales enablement

Call recording to improve the art of sales coaching

Sales managers can review call recordings to understand the conversation flow, highlight the highs and lows, and coach reps to overcome the problem areas and selling hurdles. For example, call recordings help you get the hang of the most commonly asked questions or the most common objections raised by potential leads.

Using call recordings to coach reps can help them get better at prospecting, cold calling, and converting leads.

Sales managers can also curate a collection of call recordings as game tapes — akin to the ultimate sales playlist — so that their sales teams can listen and review their performance and learn to improve their techniques. Reviewing call recordings also identifies their strengths and weaknesses.

Armed with these insights, you can adapt sales techniques that help them tap into their strengths to win more deals.

Call recording to master the science of sales enablement

Analyzing call recordings is a great way to optimize your sales process and strategy and build a pipeline of high-quality leads. The analysis also helps you learn valuable information about your customers and their interactions.

Call recordings help you spot the perfect sales pitches or moments where you lose a potential lead. Such information can help you optimize the quality of your calls and boost conversions.

What are the benefits of recording sales calls?

With recording, you can:

Call recordings offer new sales reps a first-hand glimpse into a company's sales process. They provide insights on customer pain points, sales conversations, strategy, call scripts, and other crucial elements of sales.

If a sales team has been doing its job, then customers are bound to highlight those aspects in an honest and heartfelt manner during sales calls.

Recording such calls and adapting them as customer testimonials (after approval from the client) is great for getting impactful testimonials.

You can also use these stories to build powerful customer stories and case studies that can be used in your marketing campaigns (again, after getting the client’s approval.

Sales calls are ideal for getting customer feedback on your product or services and mapping features that would benefit them. With recordings, you never miss any crucial detail.

The calls also provide your marketing team with the proper context to build more relevant marketing campaigns.

Meanwhile, customer success can learn from sales calls to better understand their customers and motivations.

Going through call recordings is an excellent way of checking the audio quality of your calls and making sure that they meet the company’s standards. If the quality isn’t great, you can invest in better service providers and equipment (headphones, mic, internet routers, and more).

You can use unique moments from sales calls as teaching moments and best practices for having great customer-facing conversations. These moments could cover tough topics such as objection handling, rapport building or cost-benefit analysis.

Building playlists for sales call best practices can help with sales onboarding, coaching, and feedback. For instance, the sales call playlist or game tapes equips new reps with the best sales techniques to prospect and convert more effectively.

Call recording best practices

1. Ask for consent

As mentioned earlier, asking for consent and informing the prospect or client the reason for recording calls is essential for legal and ethical compliance. It’s also a good idea to share how you plan on using the recordings to address any concerns beforehand.

Besides compliance, this level of transparency and openness helps build trust and lays the foundation for long-lasting customer relationships.

2. Establish call recording guidelines
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Standardizing the reason and method for recording calls also helps with compliance and simplifies the storage, management, and review of these call recordings, while adding adequate context.

Mapping the recording guidelines also helps in choosing the right tool as per your requirements.

3. Generate call transcripts

Call transcripts help in providing personalized sales coaching. Your call recording software or platform should come with automated call transcripts and metrics to speed up and enrich the post-call analysis.

4. Map the call recording use cases
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Rather than recording every conversation, developing use cases helps reduce the clutter and makes sure that only the important conversations get recorded and stored. Use cases also make it easier for your sales and legal teams to specify the reason for recording calls to comply with data privacy laws and regulations.

5. Purge older recordings as per the data retention policy
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A data retention policy helps in ensuring compliance and relevance of your data. It's good to purge older or less relevant recordings so that your sales material is timely, high-quality and useful.