German AI assistant tech startup Ciara unveils voice-enabled Deal Maps, a tool to help inside sales teams cut sales cycles in half

A little over two years ago, we wrote about Ciara after the Munich, Germany-based virtual assistant startup launched with a seven-figure investment to provide virtual assistant for inside sales reps. Similar to the assistants in the consumer market such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home, Ciara helps sales representatives effectively conduct phone conversations without struggling to find the right answers or lose the thread.

A lot has changed since our last story. Ciara has become an emerging leader in AI assistant software and the startup has gained more market penetration with its technology now been used by major brands. Ciara is paving the way for AI-enabled sales and has the potential to change the lives of salespeople everywhere.

As part of its efforts to maintain its leadership position and gain more market momentum, Ciara announced today Deal Maps, a revolutionary, voice-enabled deal intelligence dashboard that empowers salespeople to manage their opportunities more effectively.

Deal Maps visualizes the sales process in a dynamic environment to support sellers across the entire revenue cycle while capturing rich buyer insights that provide managers and revenue leaders with greater visibility into pipelines and forecasts.

Commenting on the launch, Ciara CEO Martin Heibel said, Until now, getting detailed insights into your deal pipeline has involved hours of research in your CRM and has also been immensely dependent on the quality of reps’ documentation. By integrating context-aware conversation intelligence with a dynamic sales process guideline, we allow sales organizations to always have a
crystal-clear overview of every deal and easily create repeatable and scalable processes.”

Ciara’s Deal Maps keeps sales deals moving. Deal Maps reduces the need for repeated follow-ups that can slow down the sales cycle, and enables smooth handoffs between reps – helping sales reps stay on top of their deals and making sure nothing falls through the cracks.

Ciara users are already seeing great results – from streamlined internal processes to better alignment across the entire sales cycle. Customers are excited about what Deal Maps can do for their sales teams.

“Ciara provides me with all the information I need to develop my deals,” explains Alessandro Rocca, Senior Account Executive at knowledge collaboration expert Starmind. “The in-call guidance allows me to always focus on the right topics and have a goal-driven conversation.”

Founder & CEO of Schedulehead, an employee scheduling solution provider, Derick Dorner says, “Customer conversations are the most important part of the entire sales process. Leveraging modern voice technology like Ciara to make them even more effective is a logical step.”

Ciara was founded in 2019 by serial software entrepreneurs Martin Heibel (IntraWorlds) and Konstantin Krauss (Propertybase). The startup helps sales representatives effectively conduct phone conversations without struggling to find the right answers or lose the thread. Ciara already supports more than a dozen companies worldwide in building a consistent and efficient inside sales process and training new employees quickly.

“We are convinced that productivity assistants are a radically new category of business software. Such assistants are all about making life for people in daily business situations much easier again. Instead of having to deal with dozens of tools, our customers want meaningfully automated solutions. With the Ciara inside sales assistant, we show how that’s possible: With real-time supported phone conversations, Ciara helps employees and teams achieve a new level of productivity” says Martin Heibel, managing director of Ciara.