Sales · Call coaching
MixedB2B SaaSCoaching a SaaS sales team from every call, not the few a manager hears
A sales manager can sit in on two or three calls a week. These field notes follow one discovery call with Agent Live, from the guidance cards on screen to the follow-up the rep approves and the coaching session it feeds.
Valnora & Elric team6 min read
A SaaS sales manager with eight reps can join maybe three calls a week. The rest are coached from CRM notes the rep wrote after the fact, which say what the rep remembers, not what the customer said. These notes follow one discovery call with Agent Live and the coaching that comes out of it. Names and figures are illustrative.
What does the rep see before and during the call?
The rep opens the Agent Live desktop app at 10:55. The Today view lists the 11:00 call from their calendar, with the account’s context from the CRM: company size, current plan and the last note.
When the call starts, Agent Live transcribes both sides into a live transcript. It stores no call audio. As the customer talks, cards appear from the team’s published playbook:
- Need. The customer says three support leads log escalations by hand, about an hour a day. Agent Live flags it so the rep can dig in.
- Risk. "We tried something like this last year and nobody used it." A risk card shows the playbook’s answer: ask what stopped adoption before pitching anything.
- Clarification. Twenty minutes in, nobody has said who approves the spend. A card suggests asking who signs off tools above the team’s budget line.
- Commitment. The rep promises a proposal for 25 seats by Thursday. Agent Live notes it so it is not lost.
On the side, call checks tick off as they are covered: current process, pain in the customer’s own words, decision process, next meeting booked.
Where does the guidance come from?
The cards are only as good as the playbook behind them. The enablement lead keeps the discovery playbook, objection answers and pricing rules in the Agent Serve Knowledge Base and shares them into Agent Live as guidance sources.
In the Agent Live admin portal, a playbook is tested on a sample transcript before it is published to a team. If a card fires at the wrong moment on the test, the lead edits the playbook, not the rep’s behaviour. Guidance sources are approved by someone other than the person who uploaded them, so a rep cannot add their own pricing sheet.
From playbook to coached call
Before the call · Playbook
- 01Discovery playbookQuestions, objection answers and pricing rules kept in the Knowledge Base and shared into Agent Live.
- 02Manager publishesThe playbook is tested on a sample transcript in the admin portal, then published to the sales team.
During the call · Agent Live
- 03Live transcriptBoth sides of the call are transcribed in the desktop app. No audio is stored.
- 04Guidance and call checksNeed, risk and clarification cards appear as topics come up; checks tick off as they are covered.
- 05Rep approves follow-upSummary, CRM note and email are drafted. Nothing is sent until the rep approves.
After the call · Agent Serve
- 06Follow-up workflowSends the approved email and writes the CRM note through connections set up once in Agent Serve.
- 07Coaching dashboardChecklist completion, discovery questions, talk ratio and risk hits by rep and week.
- 08Manager coachesPicks one behaviour per rep from the scores and reviews two calls with them.
What happens after the call ends?
Agent Live drafts a summary, the next step, a CRM note, tasks and the follow-up email. The rep reads the draft, fixes one line and approves it. Nothing is sent before that.
What the solution produces
Follow-up drafted by Agent Live (illustrative)
MessageSubject: Next steps on onboarding for your support team
Hi Priya, thanks for the time today. You mentioned your team logs each escalation by hand and it takes about an hour a day across three leads.
As agreed, I will send a short proposal for 25 seats by Thursday, and I have suggested 30 minutes next Tuesday with your finance lead, who signs off tools above your budget line.
You asked whether the SSO setup needs your IT team. I will confirm that in writing with the proposal rather than guess today.
Coaching note for one rep (illustrative)
Record- Rep
- Rep B · mid-market team · 14 discovery calls in four weeks
- Strength
- Commitments captured on 13 of 14 calls; follow-ups approved the same day.
- Gap
- Economic buyer question asked on 5 of 14 calls. Clarification card shown on 9 calls and passed over.
- Focus this fortnight
- Ask who signs off before the demo. Manager to review two calls together on Friday.
Approved follow-ups run through a workflow in Agent Serve, using the CRM and email connections the team set up once. The workflow writes the note to the deal, creates the Thursday task and sends the email. Every run is recorded block by block in Logs, so a manager can see what went out and when.
Notice what the draft does not do. It does not quote a price the rep did not say, and it moves the SSO question to writing rather than guessing. That comes from the playbook’s rules, not from the model being careful.
How do scores reach a dashboard?
The Agent Live admin portal has team metrics: insight adoption, discovery questions per call, talk ratio, objection resolution, checklist completion and risk hits, filtered by team, rep and dates, with a weekly trend for each. Roles decide which calls each manager can see.
For a wider view, the team also runs a dashboard in Agent Serve. The Call Compliance template scores call transcripts against your own checks, so the same discovery checklist can be scored on transcripts from your meeting platform, including calls taken without Agent Live. A named metric such as "discovery checklist completion" keeps the portal and the dashboard counting the same way.
A rule in plain language flags reps whose checklist completion dropped below 70% over the last ten calls. It does not grade anyone. It tells the manager where to look first.
How does the manager coach from it?
On Friday, the manager opens the dashboard filtered to the mid-market team. Rep B captures commitments on almost every call and approves follow-ups the same day, but asks about the economic buyer on only a third of calls. The clarification card appeared on most of the others and was passed over.
That is the coaching session: one behaviour, two calls reviewed together, and a target to check in two weeks. The manager writes the coaching note and the rep sees the same numbers. Nobody argues about whether the call "went well".
What should a team set up first?
Controls and governance
Approvals before action
Relays never send email or book meetings without an approval, under any autonomy setting. An approval covers the exact payload the reviewer saw and expires if nobody decides.
Roles and permission groups
Admin, write and read roles per workspace, plus permission groups that limit which models, blocks and integrations a team can use.
SSO and SCIM
Sign in through your identity provider with SAML 2.0 or OIDC, and provision people with SCIM.
Row-level access
Row-level policies narrow what each person sees in tables, dashboards, exports and scheduled reports.
Run logs
Every workflow run records each block’s inputs, outputs and errors, so a reviewer can trace how a result was reached.
Deployed versions
Workflows run from a deployed version, so a change is reviewed before it reaches production runs.
More on how Agent Serve handles access, data and audit on the security page.
Start with one call type, usually first discovery calls, and one playbook. Run it with two or three reps for a fortnight, read the drafts they approve and the cards they ignore, and fix the playbook before widening it. Agent Live is available by invitation through request access. For finding buying signals in calls your support team already handles, see warm handoffs from inbound calls.
Questions teams ask
Does Agent Live record the call?
No. Agent Live transcribes the conversation to guide the rep and stores no call audio. Tell the customer the call is being transcribed in line with your own policy and local law.
Can Agent Live send the follow-up on its own?
No. The email, CRM note and tasks are drafts until the rep approves them. Approved follow-ups run through Agent Serve workflows using the connections your team already set up.
Is Agent Live part of Agent Serve?
It is a separate Valnora & Elric product, available by invitation, that uses Agent Serve’s connections, knowledge and workflows.
What you need
- Agent Live access for the sales team (available by invitation)
- A written discovery playbook: questions, objection answers and what reps may say about pricing
- Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook connected, so calls show up in the Today view
- Your CRM and email connected in Agent Serve for the approved follow-ups
- A manager or enablement lead to test and publish playbook versions
- Roles agreed for who may see which reps’ calls