Deriving Better Insights from Meeting Notes Data

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The main point of having a sales meeting is to talk about issues, ideas, and solutions, that all lead to the creation of an actionable plan for the company’s sales to improve. A sales meeting can also be done one-on-one with a client to pitch one’s product or service, as well as to discuss other things like pricing and product features. If not documented properly, these meetings are as good as making small talk around the coffee table. Deriving insights from sales meeting notes is the key to realizing a meeting’s purpose.

Why take notes during Sales Meetings?

Notes are important because they summarize the real meat of the meeting. Decisions agreed upon, top performers, sales forecasts, marketing strategies, product updates, needing to know these kinds of information is the reason why a meeting is done in the first place. It aims to make the sales process more efficient and increase revenue, so it makes sense to take note of them. When facing a client, it is also important to take note of their goals, and what they want from your product or service.

However, manually taking notes while the meeting is going on can pose a few problems, which can affect its overall interpretation.

Problems with Taking notes on Sales Meetings

 

  • It makes it harder to listen. Sometimes, you can be too focused on writing down notes that you forget to listen to the meeting, resulting in a lack of understanding. When it comes to sales meetings with clients, it is very important to be attentive and to interact with them, in order to win them over, which can be hard to do if you’re manually taking notes.
  • The difference between the speed of talking and writing makes it harder to catch up. On average, a person can write 25-45 words per minute, whereas the speed of talking is an average of 140 words per minute.
  • You don’t understand the notes you took. Due to the rush, and having to multitask between writing, listening, and giving your inputs, when you look back at them, sales meeting notes can look like messy scribbles on paper. Not understanding your own notes defeats its purpose.

 

All these issues lead to the loss of sales meeting notes data. Being unsure of what to do next due to incomprehensive notes can delay the carrying out of tasks, as well as the overall progress of your sales team. It can also lead to client dissatisfaction, if you don’t get the details right.

There are solutions such as preparing a predetermined format for better organization, writing in shortcut words, or even writing your notes when the meeting is over, to avoid the rush. However, these methods are still subject to errors. Perhaps writing or typing down notes manually is the problem.

The best hands-free solution is to record and transcribe the sales meeting using a Voice to CRM data entry solution. When it comes to accuracy and comprehensiveness, no handwritten notes can compare to a direct recording. This way, no sales data can slip away.

To understand why transcriptions have the best capability in helping you create complete, and better insights in making notes, one needs to know what makes up good meeting notes in the first place, and how to meet those needs.

Factors that contribute to the complete retention of accurate data in Sales Meeting notes

 

The Extensiveness of the Notes

Having more data about what was said in a sales meeting can create better insights with the right context. More information means more accurate interpretations. The completeness of one’s meeting notes ensures that no detail, however minor, is overlooked.

This is where transcriptions or recordings can come in handy. This does not mean that your notes should look like a transcription of the meeting, that would be impractical. However, since transcriptions include every single thing in the discussion, you have more information to work with, where you can extract the most valuable and comprehensive insights, without missing anything.

 

The Timeliness of the Notes

Studies have shown that writing down meeting notes on the same day as the meeting provides more complete and accurate information relative to notes done two or three days later. Notes written a few days after tend to be dependent on one’s memory, which can cause the information to be subjective or even incomplete. Taking notes during the meeting is still better. If this is the case, imagine taking them in real-time, recording the meeting, as it is going on. Nothing can be timelier.

 

The Format and Interpretation of the Notes

Gathering lots of data can be useless if not formatted and interpreted properly. Yes, as said earlier, having extensive and complete data is good to retain details, however, these need to be sorted out the right way in order to be usable, converted into viable action items. An entire transcription cannot serve as notes because the information is far too vast. Summarizing the most important points, while not missing any significant details, is the key to better interpretation.

 

What can we do to meet all these factors?

Having extensive, timely, and well-formatted sales meeting notes can be achieved by simply recording one’s sales meeting. Afterward, the transcription of the said recording can be used to format and extract important data. But then again, doing this can mean extra work, which might disincentivize you, or your company secretary/transcriber to record and transcribe each meeting. It takes time and an unpractical amount of extra effort to be done manually.

The solution is to outsource it to a data entry software, particularly, one with a Voice to CRM service. Utilizing a Voice to CRM software maximizes efficiency in deriving insights from sales meeting notes.

Firstly, a Voice to CRM data entry software wholly records everything from a meeting. During a call or meeting, there’s no more need to worry about spelling, or catching up with what’s being said, all you need to do is to speak and no detail is left behind. Secondly, it records the data in real-time, as the meeting goes on, and thirdly, depending on the type of Voice to CRM software, the actionable points and key details from the meeting are conveniently and automatically entered into the right CRM fields. The cleaning, summarizing, and formatting of the content are done by the software.

Other benefits include:

  • Sales Meeting notes are more accurate, timely, and complete
  • Automatic data entry
  • Reduces technical problems that come with manual note-taking
  • Less risk in the loss of data
  • Allows you to focus on the sales meetings themselves

This resource can be highly beneficial for almost all departments of your company, especially for your sales team, or for anyone who regularly faces clients. We can make use of this technology to take tedious manual data entry off of our hands, saving time and effort, all while reaping the benefits of having accurate data and better insights.