What does it mean to be a Live Conversation Platform?
Aug 09 2023
Since the launch of Orum, we’ve considered ourselves a Live Conversation Platform. Recently, other organizations have begun using the terminology as a way to describe their tooling as well. As the term continues to gain traction and usage across the sales landscape, you may find yourself asking, “What is a Live Conversation Platform?" We’re here to answer all of your questions.
What is a Live Conversation Platform (LCP)?
In short, an LCP is a hybrid technology combining enablement, collaboration, and dialing to accelerate sales efficiency, thus driving more live conversations with your target market.
When you hear “Live Conversation Platform,” you might think of calling tools like parallel or power dialers. It makes sense, given that phone-first sales organizations continue to have twice the amount of live conversations per day compared to email-centric reps.
The importance of live, human-to-human conversations doesn’t have to be sold. It remains essential in sales. Studies show that calling continues to be an optimal communication channel as it allows you to be personal and build relationships quickly. In fact, 57% of decision makers still prefer phone calls to other communication channels.
Calling technology is focused on empowering reps to reach large numbers of clients and prospective clients in a short period of time. An LCP, however, is much more than just a way to call more people. Orum is a dialing, data, and enablement platform designed to get your salespeople into more live conversations with your target market. Our AI automates the tedious components of pipeline generation to improve connect rates, assist with coaching sales reps, and have more strategic conversations at scale.
Optimization through AI by eliminating manual tasks
We now know that LCPs excel at connecting your reps with more prospective customers in less time, but how does it work? By utilizing the latest in artificial intelligence and machine learning models.
Orum positions AI as a co-pilot for your salespeople so they can focus on the human-centric element of selling. We accomplish this by using AI to eliminate the mundane tasks that take away countless hours from your salespeople.
Did you know that sales reps spend less than 30% of their time actually selling? That’s because they spend endless hours manually logging activities, navigating call systems, looking for pre-call research, and writing call notes. AI can instantly perform all these tasks and more, giving sales reps back precious time to build customized call lists, personalize value propositions, and multi-thread accounts to maximize opportunities.
The less time reps have to spend on this type of work, fumbling for account research or worrying about the notes they need to take, the more time they can spend connecting with your target market, perfecting their pitches, listening to successful calls from other reps, and building their overall confidence and skill levels.
Metrics, reporting, and coaching features for sales managers
Live Conversation Platforms need to do more than maximize the daily productivity of sales reps. They also need to provide managers with coaching opportunities, easy-to-understand data on each rep, and time-saving opportunities in their schedules.
Orum provides all this and more. Managers can use Orum’s Call Library to build specific call lists creating customized training opportunities while also onboarding new reps faster. They can see metrics about the success of calls, what objections their reps are coming up against most often, and where their pitches might need improvement all in a single reporting dashboard.
Live listening enables managers to listen to their reps' conversations when time allows, and reporting dashboards let them see a holistic view of team success and growth opportunities.
Improving team culture in a remote work environment
Live Conversation Platforms are designed to connect you to more prospects, naturally, but they also connect your remote and hybrid teams as well. By recreating the buzz of the sales floor, virtually, Orum drives improvements in your sales engagement and overall team culture.
This virtual sales space lets teams perform call blitzes together. It also improves morale, creates friendly competition, and organically generates instant coaching and training opportunities. Reps can listen to other calls, hearing their coworkers' pitches and objection handling. Cold calling can be intimidating for new sales reps, but watching real-time conversations removes the stigma and fear and motivates them to pick up the phone and start dialing.
Building a better sales tech stack
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, any LCP worth its salt can’t just be another tool reps must learn how to use. Rather, it needs to be a platform reps want to learn to use. One that seamlessly integrates with the rest of your tech stack, enhancing the productivity of every other product.
You need to be able to pull reports, tasks, and call lists into your live conversation platform instantly from your CRM or Sales Engagement platforms. You should be able to build multi-threading sequencing quickly, and contact details should be available when a conversation is connected.
If your live conversation platform isn’t working with your existing tech stack, it’s inevitably working against it. A quality LCP motivates your sales reps to use these tools together as opposed to something that frustrates them to the point of burnout.
For sales reps, by sales reps
At the end of the day, no platform, feature, or tool can manufacture the drive to be a better sales rep. That initial urge to grow and hit quota comes from proper recruiting, hiring, and training. When you do have that team in place, however, it’s imperative that you provide a tech stack that empowers them to be the best version of themselves both as individuals and as a sales organization as a whole.
Orum’s live conversation platform is designed to do just that by working with your existing tools, creating a virtual space sales reps want to be in, and eliminating all mindless tasks derailing them from what they do best – selling. The best sales tech doesn’t replace sales reps but empowers them to reach their full potential.
