Substrata Reviews & Product Details

The greatest benefit of Substrata is its emphasis on Social Signal Intelligence and the application of that intelligence to the sales communication and relationships.

This platform offers our organization information beyond the scope of traditional CRMs including sentiment, engagement, communication dynamics, relationship dynamics, authority, trust, and sales team performance.

The Signals functionality allows us to gain additional insight into changes in engagement and relationship dynamics.

Q for Email enables our sales representatives to think twice about their written communication.

Authority Zone provides an additional perspective regarding communication confidence, credibility, and authority.

Performance & Team Q offers insights about the entire sales team for sales management purposes.

The value of this whole platform lies in the emphasis on human aspects of B2B sales. CRMs are good at collecting activities and information on deals but do not always reveal what is happening inside the relationship itself. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There will be a learning curve since communication intelligence is quite unlike conventional sales analytics.

The team must be educated on how to correctly analyze the signals while not considering the findings as final conclusions.

Moreover, I would like to have some automated prioritization and workflow automation features for large sales companies. In case there are many communications available, the management must find a quick way to understand what should be done immediately. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My appreciation for Substrata is because it brings the intelligence of communication on top of the intelligence that we have in our revenue systems through our CRM data. CRM intelligence includes opportunities, activities, stages, contacts, and pipeline. But Substrata brings another layer of intelligence related to engagement, sentiment, communication behavior, relationships, and sales team performance. And that will provide revenue leaders an expanded perspective of what is going on in the pipeline. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The key issue with Substrata is how you bring all this intelligence into your revenue operations. More automation of CRM workflows and prioritization will help with this challenge. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One such area of email intelligence which makes Substrata unique is also the reason why we have picked up the product. There are a lot of emails that the sales personnel send out, but it does not mean that they are effective too. There could be a lot of influence exerted by an email on how it conveys confidence, authority, trustworthiness, sentiment, and intentions. Q for Email enables our reps to consider all of that before sending out the email. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

However, this feature is mostly useful for communications of high importance. Simple messages do not require such an analysis. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Substrata tool provides more data for coaching and communication performance for sales managers. Coaching itself could become somewhat subjective. The manager remembers the phone call and then explains to the sales person what he/she thinks went wrong. Substrata tool provides us with more communication metrics which will help to give this discussion some more objectivity. We can analyze engagement, sentiment, communication, and relationships. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The managers have to still provide the human context. The insights gained from artificial intelligence should not replace the expertise of the sales leader. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

However, the capabilities under the Performance & Team Q heading can be especially useful from the perspective of a manager. While measuring sales performance based on factors of revenue, pipeline, meetings, and CRM activities, we can consider indicators related to the field of communication – such things as engagement, sentiment, talk time trends, meeting participation, responding, and relationships. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are many pieces of data available, so it is necessary to select those indicators that really have any importance for the business. The need in automated prioritization is clear here. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Authority Zone ability will enable our salespeople to have an insight into how the way they communicate might impact how they are perceived in terms of their level of authority. In B2B sales, confidence counts. One thing is being helpful and something else is communicating in a way that makes you sound unsure of yourself or trying too hard to please your client. Authority Zone provides another dimension to our team regarding communication’s role in credibility, authority, trust, and relationship building. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Context will play an important role in this aspect. What works well with one client might not work at all with another. I would like even more flexibility in this regard. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Q for Email is one of the most useful tools due to the importance of emails in advancing the B2B deals.

The tool provides information regarding how the emails could be perceived, especially in relation to authority, credibility, trust, tone, sentiment, and communication effectiveness.

This tool is more helpful to me than just a simple grammar check. An error-free email can still sound indecisive, too apologetic, too aggressive, and not very confident.

Q for Email encourages us to consider the communication strategy in creating the email. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

But I do not agree that all recommendations should be followed blindly. Sales situations can vary and, at times, a conversational and informal tone would be appropriate. It is most effective if the salesperson follows the recommendations but does not let the AI overwrite his own personality. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Temper's Chrome extension is the best part of the tool for me. I visit the prospect's LinkedIn profile and instantly get information about their DISC profile, risk preference, and decision-making speed. I can adapt my message depending on whether the prospect is "dominant" or "reserved," and my reply rate has definitely increased. The setup process took less than 10 minutes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

At times, the personality information seems to be educated guesses rather than scientific data. I would love to know the confidence levels behind the analysis. Also, the extension sometimes takes time to load when the profiles are really long. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My favorite aspect of the Signals capability is that it offers our sales team another perspective on how things are going in the customer relationship.

Traditionally, we have been aware of events that occurred in our sales process from our traditional sales reporting which indicates something happened such as a meeting took place, an email was written or an opportunity progressed to another phase.

It becomes useful when the customer does not actually voice the problem. Our salesperson will think all is good from the meeting and there are signals within the interaction which indicate something else.

I like how Signals make our salespeople think outside of what was explicitly stated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The insights still need to be analyzed using human intuition. We do not interpret any particular signal as confirmation of what the prospect is thinking about.

Also, I would appreciate some flexibility in choosing which signals are more important for various sales teams and deals. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Relationship Intelligence component of Substrata is especially helpful in cases where we have complicated accounts. Enterprise-level relationships typically don’t only include one person. They can include executives, technical contacts, procurement people, users, advocates, and decision makers, each with their own interests. Relationship dynamics, engagement, sentiment and communications can give us additional insights into managing these relationships. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The more stakeholders within an account, the more data we have to interpret. Even more account-level dashboards that would automatically highlight significant changes to relationships would make the feature even more useful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.