You’re Logging the Call. But Are You Capturing the Conversation? with Sabrina da Rocha of CloudTalk | Episode 12

In This Episode

Most sales leaders can see that calls are happening. They can count activity, watch deals move and check the pipeline. What is harder to see is what actually happened inside each conversation and what context disappears when call notes are rushed, incomplete or stuck in someone's head.

In this episode of the Motii Playbook, Fred Schnell speaks with Sabrina Da Rocha, Senior Sales Manager at CloudTalk, about how sales teams can move beyond call logging and start using conversation intelligence to improve handovers, forecasting, coaching and customer experience. The conversation explores why the quality of sales conversations matters as much as the quantity, and how better call capture can help reps spend less time on admin and more time having useful, human conversations.

For business owners and sales leaders, the takeaway is practical: activity data is a good start, but it is not enough on its own. When call context is captured properly, teams can protect momentum, coach with evidence and make the CRM a more reliable source of truth.
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What We Cover

• Why call logs alone do not show the full picture of sales performance
• The risk of losing deal momentum when call context sits only in a sales rep's head
• How automated summaries and transcripts reduce manual admin for busy reps
• Why CRM hygiene, pipeline stages and call intelligence need to work together
• How better handovers protect the customer experience when team members are away
• Why coaching should focus on conversation quality, not just call volume
• How leaders can use call insights in one-on-ones, forecasting and deal reviews
• The mindset shift from measuring activity to improving the quality behind the numbers

Resources Mentioned

Tools and frameworks mentioned in the episode:

• CloudTalk
• Pipedrive

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Transcript

Intro:

Motii acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to elders past and present and acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of this land. Welcome to the Motii Playbook. If you've ever felt like your systems are technically in place, but somehow still feel chaotic behind the scenes, you're in the right spot. This is where we share what we're seeing, what's working, what's not, and the lessons businesses learn the hard way. Think of it as practical strategy straight from the trenches. Let's dive in.

Fred Schnell:

Welcome to the Motii Playbook, one shift, one system, one measurable improvement. My name's Fred Schnell, and I'm the Managing Director here at Motii. Now, most sales managers know that their teams are making calls, right? They can see it in the activity logs, they can see deals moving through the pipeline, they hear a quick update at the very least, a summary of the conversations during the weekly meetings, right? But what they often don't know is what actually happens inside these conversations and, more importantly, what context is maybe lost as a result. So, today, we will be talking a little bit more about what happens when sales conversations become more than just an activity log. Today I'm joined by Sabrina Da Rocha, who is a Senior Sales Manager at CloudTalk. Together we will unpack what a lot of sales teams are missing out on and what changes when sales conversations are really properly captured. Sabrina, really great to have you with us. Now, for people hearing your name for the first time, do you mind just giving a short introduction to yourself, what CloudTalk does, and who it is built for?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yes. Hi Fred. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. It's a great pleasure to talk to you today. So as I said, I'm Sabrina Da Rocha, that's my last name. No worries, nobody can pronounce that correctly. My last name is from Brazil.

Fred Schnell:

Beautiful.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yeah, I'm Senior Sales Manager here at CloudTalk as you said, for the SMB team, which is our focus. CloudTalk started as a VoIP system, as a telephony tool integrating with lots of CRMs, but right now we are in an AI era that we'll talk a lot about in a moment. And CloudTalk is not out of it. It's actually one of our core products nowadays. It's the voice agent, that's basically an AI voice agent, that's what we are doing and everything that is in the intelligence behind the AI with voice. Yes, this is CloudTalk.

Fred Schnell:

Very nice. Very nice. So Sabrina, you mentioned you speak to sales teams of different shapes and sizes every day, right? So when you look at those businesses and those teams and how their sales teams currently use their phone systems, where do you think the biggest gaps are today?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

What we are seeing a lot here when, yes, we talk to sales teams every day. And we are still in the era where people are seeing numbers and not the quality of the calls, right? What is being said there. So they are still checking, "Hey, my rep's doing 150 calls per day," but what are they talking about there? So what can we get as information from that? And how can we be more effective and efficient in our sales motion with this information? So this is the biggest challenge that I encounter every day.

Fred Schnell:

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. So I guess a lot of sales managers listening would say the most important point is, "I know these sales calls are actually happening, right? So I mean, I see the deals progressing, my targets are being hit, you know, happy days," right? Now talking about the difference between logging the fact that the calls actually happened and then, as you say, capturing the essence or capturing the context of the conversation. In your view, what is the risk for a sales team when they actually don't do that?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yeah. There are different risks, right? For us in leadership, forecasting is super difficult in this moment because you can be forecasting something that is not correct. We have also the big risk of the AE losing momentum with the customer. If an AE goes on paternity leave, as I just had one now, and someone comes in and has to take all the calls, or if it's something that we need to have someone jump into this deal that was with another AE, another rep, it's super difficult to just see, "Okay, yeah, they had four calls."

Fred Schnell:

Call happened. Yeah.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

What happened? And then we need to rely on what they added there manually as the information. Oh, this is also a big problem in every single sales team. So yeah. I think the big risk is losing the momentum and also for us, it's our visibility, right?

Fred Schnell:

And so, I mean, I have been in the business development and sales role myself in my career. As a sales rep, you are pretty much back-to-back in meetings and calls all day, right? But by the time you come up for air, really the last thing you want to do is spend another hour or so writing up your notes on every conversation you had throughout the day. So the reality is that in most cases, the sales rep ends up writing the bare minimum or then next time they talk to the client, deciphering the scribbles that they have in their notebook or simply relying on their brain memory, right? Their brain muscle memory. So Sabrina, in your view, what do you think this means for the business over time?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yeah, this is what we are seeing right now is that those accounts that started five years ago and with these notes that we have manually are completely different to the ones that we see right now if we have something that is automating that, right? So...

Fred Schnell:

In what respect?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yes, because the main thing here, Fred, is to give the reps the right to just relax and talk to the customer, right? Which is something that AI won't do for us. It is this connection, the human connection. So if they can spend the time talking to the customer, understanding the customer's real problem and what we are solving there and having a good conversation, and then they are free after that because we have a summary that is there with the highlights, with exactly the points that we need, and also a transcript and all of this data that we can have nowadays, and not only a call log, this is transforming the way that we can see the deal and also this part which is the human connection. So we can progress the deal easier and also having this "people buy from people," right? So that's the end, and this is what we are trying to solve: that they have a relaxed conversation, not thinking about, "Oh yes, I need to put these notes here," or "Did I forget anything?" No, this is not what we want at the end of the day, right?

Fred Schnell:

Yeah. And in more specific terms, how does CloudTalk solve this issue? So I mean, it's music to probably every sales rep out there to say, "Oh my God, I can do the calls and then I don't have to spend the one or two hours at the end of the day to summarise all the stuff that I can't decipher anymore," kind of thing, right? So how does CloudTalk solve that?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

So right now at CloudTalk, we have the conversation intelligence tool that is basically integrated with your CRM. CloudTalk is integrating with a couple of CRMs, Pipedrive and all the big names.

Fred Schnell:

Yeah.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

You'll have the call logged as an activity, but with this tool, you'll also have in your CRM the summary of what happened in this call. So on top of that, you can also have something behind it, which for sales leaders is the highlight here. It's the coaching tool where you can see the sentiment, what happened there, and then you can also have the coaching moments a little bit more direct to the point, right? And you create it all for your case, for your company's use case.

Fred Schnell:

Yeah. Okay. Now I am absolutely certain that there are a lot of businesses out there that have a telephony platform like CloudTalk and they use the platform as basically an online phone or a smarter phone if you like, right? So in your view, what does a team using CloudTalk really well actually look and feel like?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yeah. You touched on a very nice point, which is "using well," right? We need to put our effort there to understand the process behind and before the technology. Right? So if we have the reps with an old-fashioned way of reaching out, approaching, and everything, the technology won't do anything, right? So the people that we see really use our platform well are the teams that are thinking about the technology before the technology, right? They are thinking about the outcome. So exactly what I'm saying is that they have integrated all their tools, of course, they are talking super well. You can rely that every single call will be recorded, will be logged, you will have the summary there. But they are not only leaving the data there. So the ones where we really see the outcome are the leaders who go back and see, "Okay, I have my one-on-one, let me go coach this. I have the forecast meeting with the team, let's check what really happened there." And this is not going through the calls and listening to all of them... No, it's a mix. It's a mix.

Fred Schnell:

Yeah. So really also putting a lot of effort into the structure and the process and the workflows before you actually put the technology in place, right?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yeah.

Fred Schnell:

So when you think about CloudTalk itself and the smart capabilities that CloudTalk has, which one would you say is the most underutilised of the smart capabilities?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Well, I am talking about the coaching part. And this is exactly where the leaders are not spending the right time because I know, time management is still very, very difficult, even in the AI moment, right? This is one of them. What I would say is that we check the summary, we can see what happened there in the deal, but if they go to our dashboard where we have an AI analytics dashboard where you see exactly what happened from that deal, if your rep is talking too much. Or what is the talking ratio?

Fred Schnell:

Talking ratio, yeah.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Ratio. Which is something very basic but very, very important. And then you can have a good, good outcome from there, right? In the coaching moment. And also for the SDRs team, people that are doing cold calling, that is lots of our clients in this field. So it's one of the tools that they should be using more.

Fred Schnell:

Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's with every solution out there, right? That most people probably only use a fraction of what the solution is actually capable of. And particularly now, there are so many tools out there and a lot of organisations put tools in place to fix or patch up a problem, but they're not really thinking about, "Okay, well, how does it fit into the wider ecosystem and how do I actually get the most out of that technology solution," right?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yeah.

Fred Schnell:

So I'm just curious about the handover specifically because I believe this is where a lot of opportunities can lose momentum. As you said, right, a sales rep goes on maternity or paternity leave, or is sick for a few days. So what does a good handover between sales reps actually look like when the call data is properly captured?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yes, then things are much easier here. So the example that I just gave: this rep needed to go from one day to another, it was planned for another date and then he left way before, which is normal, which is something that life happens, right? In the middle of the business. And once we have all the deals there, we jump into the CRM, we check what he had, and then I was just putting the AEs, the people that were covering this AE.

Fred Schnell:

Yeah.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

They could just go there and read the summary in two minutes and understand where the deal was. But it's not only our tool, right? We're talking about the stages that need to be right, it's the pipeline hygiene. And if we can make the rep's life easier in this way, not only the telephony part, but the full CRM, it just works naturally. So they're not losing momentum, they can go to the next meeting knowing exactly what they need to talk about.

Fred Schnell:

I guess it's also, you know, as a client, you feel like, "Okay, they actually listened to what I said in my last call." And it's not, "Oh, is he or she asking exactly the same question as the rep before? I've told you that information before." So you kind of pick up where it was left off as in, "Okay, let's go two or three steps backwards and start from that point again," right?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yeah, exactly.

Fred Schnell:

Yeah. I guess also, from a business owner perspective, I think it's a conversation around mitigation of operational risk because it's crucial to maintain that relationship history. Because if it only sits in the sales rep's head and that rep just walks out the door one day, the entire knowledge and experience and understanding of where the client relationship is just walks out the door with that person, right?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. An opportunity will be dead in a few weeks for sure. If you're going into a call that is with a CEO or a C-level of a company, nobody has time to waste, right? Nobody wants to be there and talk about... and sometimes we are in a late stage of the deal. And we cannot go back to where we were. This rep, they need to be well informed and 100% informed. Same with support, same with sales. So yeah. I totally agree. Yeah.

Fred Schnell:

Now, you touched on a very, very important point about the coaching side of things. And I bet everyone knows the little disclaimer you hear when you call your bank, for example, "This call is being recorded for training and quality purposes." And when you think about it, large or enterprise organisations have been doing this for years. And I hope not because they want to spy on people, but because they want consistency and a way to continuously improve their customer experience, right? I think historically, a lot of growing businesses or SMEs probably saw this as something only big enterprise companies could actually afford to do and had the team to do it. But technology has evolved a lot over the years, and you mentioned CloudTalk has that coaching functionality. I also believe that most sales managers out there would absolutely love to be able to coach and support their team a lot better. But they simply don't have the time to sit next to them and listen to the conversations on the calls. So, Sabrina, run me through what possibilities does that coaching ability or feature of CloudTalk open up that were not possible before?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yeah. So the visibility that we have. And you touched on the right point when you're talking about the enterprise and people, we hope that they're not there to just see what they're doing.

Fred Schnell:

Yeah.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Which should never be the case, right? It's not the focus.

Fred Schnell:

Should not be the focus, right? I truly believe... yeah, I absolutely agree with that. Yeah.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

So there is a culture that needs to be built before that.

Fred Schnell:

Mm-hmm.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Which is the AE and the rep or the support team feeling comfortable in being recorded. And it's not every team that is there for that, right? So one of the first points that we see a lot is that when you have this culture where people are comfortable being recorded, the conversation goes better. And when you have better conversations, you have better recordings, and in the end, you can coach them better, right? And we are talking about revenue in the end. Because you are multiplying your opportunities because you have a better sales motion. So...

Fred Schnell:

But why do you think the conversations become better once you know that you're being recorded? I think it's kind of contradictory because you would think like, "Oh, I'm being recorded," whereas you're saying that the conversation actually improves. Is that because they feel like, "Okay, I'm being recorded so I need to make sure that I follow my script better," or what is it?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Not really. Right now what's happening is, and I can talk about our own team here at CloudTalk, I was super surprised when I joined the company that everyone wanted to be recorded. Because they don't want to do the work after! They have the summary. They have everything. So if they do ask the right questions, if they follow MEDDIC, if they follow our methodology, if they do everything they need to do, in the end, the CRM will be already filled in.

Fred Schnell:

Will take care of it.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

They will take care of it. So...

Fred Schnell:

So you'd be stupid not to be recorded, right?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yes. So for them, it's just like, if something goes wrong and it's not being recorded, people start... it's like the phone is not working. It's like for them it's...

Fred Schnell:

Same as now with every meeting, right? You've got your Fireflies, your Fathom, whatever, right? And when it doesn't start you go, "Oh my God, where's my meeting recorder?" Yeah.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yes. Exactly. Yeah, so that's the point. And this is natural. It has to be natural, Fred, otherwise people just get this feeling of "I've been watched." And when it becomes a habit that you are with your rep, you check their CI, your analytics there, you see what happened, and then we have a real action from that, it's just a career development in the end, right? We are developing. And everything goes better.

Fred Schnell:

I think you bring up a really interesting point because an organisation that is simply logging the calls, I understand why a sales rep would say, "Well, they just want to check how many calls I'm making." Whereas if you're recording it, similar to a video meeting recorder, you know, "Okay, I'll get my summary, I can go back, I can review." But from a leadership point of view, that's a very interesting point because in sales, we talk about setting KPIs. When we set KPIs, we mostly say it should be activity-based and not just a simple revenue target. It's more about the activity, which points to measuring things like calls made, follow-ups completed, conversations held. And don't get me wrong, I still believe from a KPI setting point of view, this is probably the best thing to do. But it is super important to remind ourselves that just because there's a lot of activity doesn't necessarily mean that the quality is right. And that's where I think, yes, you record the conversations to have the notes, but it also goes back to coaching. Once you start to see activity is happening but the sales are not coming through, you can dive into coaching. Is that where the evolution is?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yes, that's exactly where the evolution is. And the leaders that are one step behind are the ones that are seeing this working better. I mean, if you wait until the moment you need to see... there's nothing wrong with the KPIs, with the numbers, of course not. We should have the activities there. It's a combination. It's not changing one thing for another. So sometimes if you see the reps have the right number of calls and they don't have the outcome, we need to check that before coming to this point, right? So we need this as a habit. That's why tools like CI at CloudTalk help exactly with that. It's a weekly thing. It's not something that you do when something goes wrong. Coaching should be part of the process. I know it sounds like, "Who has time for that, right?" But if you are in your one-on-ones only checking, "Okay, green lights here because you had this amount of calls, green lights here because you got this amount of meetings," but you don't go into the deals that are starting now with the rep, checking multi-threading and everything where you can go a little bit deeper, it's exactly where we want to evolve. So answering your question, yes, this is where we're going. It's the quality part.

Fred Schnell:

So I think it's absolutely not about controlling and checking. KPI setting is good following the number of activities, but it's also more about optimising and setting people up for success to say, "Okay, well, look, from a coaching point of view, we've listened to this, these are some of the areas that you might be able to get better at." So it's actually in the interest of not just the business, but also the sales rep, because they keep on improving, and hopefully see the results coming through a bit better as well, right?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yeah. Yeah. No, 100%.

Fred Schnell:

I like it. So look Sabrina, this brings me to my last question. And we always finish every episode with the same question to our guest. If a sales manager or business owner is listening to this podcast right now and is recognising their team in this conversation, what is the one shift in thinking you would hope they take away from this conversation?

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Yes. I was thinking about this question because I know this comes as a traditional question for the podcast. And if I can summarise everything that we just said now, it is stopping seeing just the numbers, so the calls logged there, only the KPIs, but seeing behind that what the qualitative part is, right? So it seems very simple, but in the end, it is something that we need to add to our day-to-day, our daily tasks. It's not something that we can just see when things go wrong. So I would say yes, if we can get the right tools to get to what the quality is behind the quantity... yes, we'll get there. We'll get there.

Fred Schnell:

I think I'm absolutely in the same boat here. I believe most businesses would measure activity, which is a very, very good start, don't get me wrong. But I think the real value will sit within the conversations themselves. So again, back to your point about the quality of the conversations, and that's where I would love people to shift their mindset. Sabrina, thank you so much for joining us today. Really, really enjoyed the conversation. And look, for anyone listening, please head to motii.co/playbook if you want to learn more about CloudTalk and how it fits into your connected sales setup. And please also reach out to the Motii team if you have any questions or would like to discuss what the setup could look like in your business. On that note, thank you so much for listening and we'll see you in the next one.

Sabrina Da Rocha:

Thank you. Thank you, Fred. Thank you, Motii team.

Outro:

That's it for another episode of the Motii Playbook. One shift, one system, one measurable improvement. All information shared in this podcast is general in nature. For tailored advice specific to your business, visit motii.co/playbook and book a momentum call with our team. See you next time.