If you manage a sales team or own a pipeline target, you know the drill: endless dashboards, uncertain forecasts, and a nagging sense you’re missing something between the CRM and reality. This guide is for people who want to use real conversations—not just gut feel or stale reports—to actually get smarter about what’s moving deals forward (and what’s stalling them out). We’ll walk through how to use Convin conversation intelligence to dig out insights that matter, skip the fluff, and help your team close more, faster.
Step 1: Get Clear On What You Want to Learn (and Why)
Before you open any tool, ask yourself: What are the blind spots in your pipeline? Typical goals people have with conversation intelligence:
- Spotting deal risks before they turn into losses
- Finding coaching moments to help reps actually improve
- Figuring out which messaging works—and which falls flat
- Cutting through “happy ears” to see what buyers are really saying
Don’t turn this into a fishing expedition. Pick 1-2 real questions you want to answer. For example, “Why are deals stalling after demo?” or “Are reps consistently handling pricing objections?” If you don’t have a question, you’ll just get a pile of data with no direction.
Pro Tip: Write your main question on a sticky note and slap it on your monitor. Every insight you pull from Convin should tie back to this.
Step 2: Set Up Convin for Maximum Signal, Minimum Noise
A lot of people get excited, plug in conversation intelligence, and drown in irrelevant call recordings. Don’t do that. Take a few minutes to set up Convin for real-world use:
- Connect your tools: Sync your calendar, CRM, dialer, and video call platforms. The more sources, the richer the data.
- Choose which calls to record: Quality beats quantity. Start by tracking discovery, demo, and late-stage negotiation calls—skip the internal debriefs or tech support.
- Define key topics and moments: In Convin, you can tag (or auto-tag) things like “budget,” “timeline,” “competitor mention,” etc. Don’t go wild. Pick 5-10 topics you care about.
- Set up notifications: Decide who gets alerted and for what. Example: Sales managers get pinged when a key deal mentions a competitor.
This setup takes an hour, tops, but saves you from sifting through hundreds of “nice to meet you” calls that won’t move your pipeline.
What to Ignore: Don’t waste time tracking every single word or phrase. Focus on the themes that matter to your sales process.
Step 3: Surface Trends—Don’t Just Listen to Anecdotes
Here’s where most people get stuck: They listen to a few calls, hear one weird objection, and assume it’s a trend. That’s not insight—that’s noise.
Convin does the heavy lifting here by surfacing trends across dozens or hundreds of conversations. Here’s how to use it:
- Look for repeat patterns: Are certain objections popping up across multiple reps? Is “budget” or “integration” killing deals?
- Compare top and bottom performers: Do your best reps handle certain objections differently? Are they asking better questions up front?
- Spot gaps in messaging: Are reps actually delivering the value prop the way marketing wrote it? (Spoiler: Usually not.)
How to Do It in Convin: - Use the dashboard’s filters to slice by deal stage, product line, or rep. - Pull up the “topic trends” or “objection frequency” reports. - Listen to snippets, not full calls—your time is valuable.
If you see the same issue across 10+ deals, you’ve found a real insight worth acting on.
Step 4: Turn Insights Into Pipeline Actions
Data is useless if it sits in a report. The point is to actually improve your pipeline. Here’s how to make sure you’re not just admiring the problem:
- Share clips, not summaries: Instead of writing a long email, send a 30-second clip of a real customer objection to your team. It hits harder.
- Coach with specifics: “Handle pricing better” means nothing. “Here’s how Sarah reframed the pricing conversation and won the deal” is actionable.
- Update your playbook: If a certain objection is killing deals, add a new section in your playbook or cheat sheet. Don’t wait for the next sales kickoff.
- Feed insights to marketing: Are buyers confused about a feature? Let marketing know—maybe the website or collateral needs work.
Pro Tip: Set a recurring 15-minute meeting (really, 15) to review 2-3 top insights with your team each week. Keep it focused; skip the endless discussion.
Step 5: Don’t Get Distracted—Measure What Changes
The dirty secret of most “insight” projects is that nothing actually changes. Don’t make this mistake.
- Pick one metric to watch: Is it stage-to-stage conversion? Win rate? Fewer deals ghosting after demo? Pick one.
- Set a baseline: What’s your current number? Write it down.
- Act on one insight: Make your change—maybe it’s better objection handling, maybe it’s better discovery questions.
- See what happens in 30 days: Did the metric move? If yes, great. If no, try a different insight.
Forget fancy dashboards if nobody’s using them. The only thing that matters is whether your pipeline gets healthier.
What Actually Works (And What Doesn’t)
Let’s be real—conversation intelligence isn’t magic, and Convin is no exception. Here’s what’s worth your time:
Works: - Surfacing repeated, deal-killing objections you didn’t know about - Revealing where reps are going off-script or skipping key questions - Getting new reps up to speed faster with real call examples - Showing marketing what’s really happening on the front lines
Doesn’t Work: - Expecting AI to tell you “who will close” (it can’t read minds) - Tracking too many irrelevant phrases—just creates noise - Using it as a surveillance tool (kills morale, fast) - Drowning in reports instead of picking one thing to fix
Don’t buy the hype. Use the tool to answer real questions and drive real change, one step at a time.
Keep It Simple—And Iterate
You don’t need to boil the ocean. Start with one pipeline blind spot, use Convin to dig up what’s really happening in your team’s calls, and act on what you learn. It’s not about dashboards or AI wizardry—it’s about using conversations to make smarter decisions, faster.
If you keep it simple, focus on actions, and tweak as you go, you’ll get more out of conversation intelligence than 90% of teams out there. The rest is just noise.