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In many organizations, marketing and sales teams operate in silos. Their data is fragmented, scattered across disparate systems and platforms. This makes it challenging to gain a comprehensive view of the buying journey, and to optimize it effectively. Without a unified approach to data, marketing and sales teams often find themselves working with incomplete or conflicting information, leading to misinformed decisions and wasted resources.
However, there's a solution on the horizon: revenue execution platforms. For the uninitiated, revenue execution platforms are software solutions that connect the entire customer buying journey. They work by bridging the data gap from the marketing team that engages customers and the sales teams that close the deals, creating a unified view of the buying journey.
It can feel challenging to navigate the market for revenue execution platforms, as the category is just emerging and there are a wide range of vendors to choose from. To help you with your search, we’ve put together this list of 10 essential features your revenue execution platform should have. Follow these guidelines, and your marketing and sales teams will be humming like a well-oiled machine.
While all of these features combined make it possible to unify the full buying journey, you should prioritize the ones that will make the biggest impact on your business. From there you can seek out the vendors that have strength in those areas. Don’t forget to consider growing with the platform, though. One that meets your basic needs now may not work for you later, so use this list to choose one that will grow with you and prevent having to go through a painful switch later.
An issue many marketing teams face is they aren’t tracking their full ROI — while most can track the online conversions they bring in, they’re missing out on the revenue they drive from phone leads. If you fail to account for phone leads, you’re significantly underreporting the revenue you drive.
You want to ensure your revenue execution platform solves this critical blind spot in the customer journey by giving you attribution for the calls your campaigns drive. Having this data is critical, especially with organizations cutting back on marketing budgets. To defend your marketing spend and make impactful optimizations, you’ll need a platform that captures granular attribution for every phone lead — down to the campaign, ad, keyword, and webpage that drove it.
The best revenue execution platforms don’t just track that calls occurred — they also use AI to identify if those calls were leads and if they converted to revenue. Some revenue execution platforms offer basic keyword spotting (if a word or phrase was said on a call) to predict the lead intent and conversation outcome of calls. That data is often inaccurate because it can only detect the specific words and phrases you told it to look for. For example, if it only detects if someone said the word “appointment”, it could get false positives from people calling to cancel appointments.
For optimal performance, you should choose a revenue execution platform that trains its AI on your phone calls. This will allow the AI to understand exactly what to look for on your specific calls (and what not to) to measure the insights you need. You’ll also want to choose an AI that isn’t static — leading platforms are powered by machine learning, so their AI models evolve and improve with each conversation. Finally, you should choose an AI that is full explainable and customizable, rather than a black-box model.
A major issue that prevents revenue teams from collaborating effectively is siloed data. Customer journey insights are spread across many different tools, leaving no central source of truth for marketing and sales teams to rely on.
The right revenue execution platform can be instrumental in solving this all-too-common issue. A revenue execution platform shouldn’t be just another tool to add to an already-crowded tech stack — it should have deep integrations with the software your team uses every day. This allows marketing and sales teams to easily share data and collaborate to improve the buying journey.
Ensuring the phone leads you drive are routed to the most capable sales agent is paramount to maximizing conversion rates and driving revenue. When a potential customer picks up the phone to inquire about a product or service, they expect a seamless and personalized experience that addresses their specific needs and concerns.
That’s why you’ll want to choose a revenue execution platform with intelligent call routing features. The best revenue execution platforms use data from the caller's digital journey before the call to automatically route callers to the sales agent best equipped to handle their inquiries. This reduces hold times and improves close rates, since agents have more time to focus on high-value leads.
When customers call your business, they expect you to know who they are and what they want. They want their experience to be personalized from end to end, regardless of which channels they use to engage with you.
Leading revenue execution platforms can help you deliver these stand-out customer experiences. They give contact center agents insights about the caller’s digital journey before the call begins so they can serve them better. Just imagine the difference between hearing “Hello, thank you for calling, before we get started can I have your name?” and “Hi James, I see you’re looking for high-speed internet. I’ll happily help you find a package that fits your needs.” This level of personalization can eliminate lengthy exchanges that irritate customers, waste valuable agent time, and drive up costs.
On top of answering the customer calls that come in, your contact center agents have to complete tedious after-call administrative work like summarizing conversations and updating the CRM. After-call work eats up time your agents could spend on higher-value activities. These administrative tasks can also increase hold times at your contact centers or locations, as agents must complete them before they can take the next call in the queue.
The right revenue execution platform can help you remove unnecessary administrative work from your agents’ workflows so they can focus on assisting customers. Some platforms automatically send call outcome data, such as what a customer purchased, purchase amount, and more, to a CRM after the call ends, eliminating the need for agents to manually enter the information. Revenue execution platforms can also use generative AI to automatically summarize calls so agents don’t have to do this work themselves.
Your contact center agents are often the first human interaction your customers have with your company, so you need to make sure they’re making a great first impression. This means doing quality assurance to ensure they’re hitting the right talking points and adhering to your standards.
Some companies listen to a small sample of their calls to perform quality assurance and score agent performance. However, this method is flawed — their quality assurance is only scratching the surface of the calls they receive, leading to inaccuracies and biases.
Revenue execution platforms solve this problem by automatically scoring 100% of calls with AI. No two sales organizations are the same — that’s why many solutions allow you to set your own unique criteria to score sales agent success. Then AI automatically detects which of these criteria are met on each call and assigns a corresponding score. As a result, your agents will also receive instant and objective feedback about how well they’re performing.
Scoring calls is only one aspect of the agent coaching process — contact center managers also need to give personalized feedback to reinforce strengths and identify areas for improvement. Giving timely and actionable feedback can be challenging for managers overseeing several agents — especially if those agents are working remotely.
The right revenue execution platform will give agents access to their call recordings, transcripts, and scorecards after calls end. This allows them to spot areas to improve and “self-coach” their way to better close rates.
In addition, the right platform will allow managers to comment on those transcripts and tag agents with feedback. For example, you can tag an agent at a particular moment in a call transcript where they did not handle a situation properly and provide advice on how they can improve. This can be done as soon as a call ends, so you can “micro-coach” at the moment when agents are most likely to remember the call and be able to apply your advice.
Data security is often the biggest obstacle to implementing artificial intelligence. That’s because AI systems require access to a large volume of sensitive data to train and operate effectively. This data may include personally identifiable information (PII), financial records, protected health information (PHI), or proprietary business data, making it a prime target for cyberattacks and data breaches.
The best revenue execution platforms have enterprise-grade security and compliance to protect sensitive data while complying with all applicable regulations. When searching for a vendor, you’ll want to ensure they meet the following compliance standards:
Leading revenue execution platforms also automatically redact sensitive customer data from call recordings and transcripts. In addition, they use explainable AI, rather than black-box models, so you can understand how the algorithms came to their decisions.
Some revenue execution platforms can be complex and time-consuming to onboard, while others are simpler to plug and play. In addition, factors like your team’s technical expertise can impact the implementation process. Therefore, for certain applications, you may need full white-glove service with a dedicated customer support specialist to get you up and running. For other vendors, a self-service approach is enough — all you need is a login and you can do the rest.
Choosing a vendor that gives you the right amount of personal attention is critical to your success with revenue execution software, and can impact the ROI you generate from it. If you have a dedicated representative who you speak to each week, you can grow with the vendor and expand your usage of the platform. If you go with a self-service approach, you won’t have a trusted expert to lean on, but you will probably enjoy some savings.
Finding the right revenue execution solution for your organization is all about asking the right questions. Here are some you should ask any vendor before you sign on:
Brands like AutoNation, DIRECTV, Verizon, and Banner Health use Invoca as their revenue execution platform. Our solution is powered by industry-leading AI and is backed by enterprise-grade security.
Want to learn why leading brands choose us over the competition? Request your personalized demo to see our platform in action.
Want to learn more about the revenue execution category? Download The Forrester Wave: Real-Time Revenue Execution Platforms, Q2 2024 report.
