How AI Is Transforming the Sales Industry With Modjo’s Paul Berloty

When I became a manager, I started to understand the power of call recording. 

After working as an inside sales rep for a scale-up tech company, I co-founded my own software business. I was facing some major challenges that needed to be addressed. Business forecasting was time-consuming, our CRM was either empty or full of subjective information, and sales performance was hard to scale. We had some months where we were doing 20% less in sales, and I had no idea what was happening. 

We put in the same level of energy, and we had the same pitch, but we didn’t close like we needed to. When I discovered that we were recording calls, I decided to listen to them. 

I spent a lot of hours trying to identify the key takeaways in these call recordings, but when I was done, I finally understood where we made mistakes, what was wrong with our pitch, and how the competition handled their business. I couldn’t have heard any of that when I was on a call.

But my team – and probably yours – record multiple conversations throughout the workflow that it’s impossible to do this entire process with every single one. I attended demos of the best conversation intelligence platforms, but the only capability that every reference customer has adopted was coaching. I found it interesting because coaching creates more work for managers and sellers. I thought there was something to solve here.

This is where I decided to start my own company, Modjo, a conversation intelligence software. It’s a technology designed to analyze sales calls not only for coaching capability but also for extracting insights from conversations that can help sales leaders calculate their forecast accurately, improve their day-to-day execution, find the best next steps for each deal, and identify areas of improvement and opportunities for more solid customer relationships in the future. 

After learning about the innovations of conversation intelligence, I couldn’t believe these processes were ever done manually. 

What can AI do for the sales rep?

Imagine having a solution that equips you with tailored insights on what needs to be said for your next meeting. And it isn’t just about convenience.

The clarity and simplicity of a tool like that could completely transform the sales preparation process. Instead of sifting through mountains of data or trying to recall the nuances of previous conversations, you can effortlessly gather the information you need, empowering you to walk into meetings with confidence and purpose.

The newest developments in generative AI inspired us at Modjo to lean in a bit further toward automation. We decided to put AI at the core of our mission, and while some people were unsure about this move, we embraced it. We implemented GPT-2 and GPT-3 to increase the quality of the insights we were extracting from these sales conversations.

Integrating generative AI from the start changed the game and set us apart from the competition. Fast forward, and the industry is now playing catch-up, recognizing the transformative power of AI in the sales software industry.

AI's impact on the sales software industry

At Modjo, we don't just stop at extracting insights from customer conversations; we're on a mission to redefine how revenue organizations achieve peak performance. Traditional methods might provide insights into customer pain points and preferences, but we believe in taking it a step further by pushing automated actions so you can improve your forecasts, close more deals, and empower your top performers in the rest of your organization.

We can take that extra step because generative AI lets us understand what customers care about and steers us toward the strategies that work on our end to close deals successfully. It's about more than just keywords and generic insights.

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Sales organizations typically rely on CRM integrations to report information about their customers. Say a sales representative spends valuable hours meticulously inputting information into a CRM system. It's a painstaking process that demands a significant chunk of their time and introduces a subjective layer to critical data. What's the price of the tool? When did they subscribe? When was the deal closed? What was said in that one meeting? How many deals slipped through the cracks because the real purpose of a conversation was lost along the way?

Answering these questions takes time. And when time is money, any way to optimize the process is welcome. Automation assists these representatives along the way, empowering them to focus on what they do best, which is building authentic connections and closing deals instead of reading through call scripts or completing their CRM.

Using AI, we can revisit conversations, transcribe them, and use algorithms to extract key insights that will help sales organizations make the right decisions on time and grow their business.

In the landscape of conversation intelligence, where legacy competitors like Gong, ZoomInfo, and Clari have paved the way, it's crucial to understand the fundamental shift that generative AI brings to the table. The traditional approach adopted by these industry leaders involves recording and transcribing conversations and relies heavily on keyword detection for coaching insights. 

This provides a basic level of understanding, but it falls short of capturing the context that truly drives meaningful insights. The “old” insights derived from keyword-based detection may reveal surface-level information while missing subtle cues and distinct selling propositions that distinguish one conversation from another.

Our generative AI comprehends those subtleties in each conversation: the underlying meaning, the emotions conveyed, and the context.

The sales software industry is getting completely shaken up thanks to the innovations of generative AI. For example, we put AI first, and almost 90% of what our competitors are doing is not necessary anymore because generative AI exists. 

And it does all this automatically, extracting key insights and providing the next steps without the need for manual intervention. Imagine the time saved and the efficiency gained. Tasks that once demanded hours of human effort now do their thing in the background. Sales teams can redirect their focus from mundane data processing to strategic decision-making and relationship-building.

The future of AI and sales

You build products to try to solve your issues for your users. What are they trying to achieve? Why are they using a CRM integration? Most of the time, they just want to have a single place where all their customer data is accessible and useful. 

For the sales rep, it’s about having that information so next steps are clearer. They want to know how they can bring their best arguments to every meeting, what the real deals on the team are, and where they should put their attention.

These are the questions that CRM integrations answer, but it’s all being challenged by the innovations of generative AI. CRM tools are due for an update. 

Regulating AI

AI has the power to spark some serious innovation, but we are only beginning the process of regulation, a necessary step when it comes to accountability and transparency.

As AI tools become more sophisticated, understanding how decisions are made becomes very difficult. AI algorithms have already been found to perpetuate human biases. Regulations are meant to ensure that AI developers and users are accountable for the outcomes of their systems.

The possibilities are endless

When it comes to AI and its applications in the sales software industry, there is so much that can be done. Whether it’s recording, transcribing, or trying to identify the next steps, what automation brings to the table above all else is optimization. Less pining over the details and more closing deals.

Now that you can automate insights using AI, you can also think about how you can set up these actions automatically. It is not 100% accurate yet, but it's fascinating. 

Ready to plunge into the world of artificial intelligence and the sales industry? Find out how sales companies are implementing AI tools to sell faster and smarter.