Coaching Archives - Gong

How Elsevier lands 45% larger deals using Gong across its NOAM sales team

Hannah Hapin — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 17:59:48 +0000

How Elsevier lands 45% larger deals using Gong across its NOAM sales team Coaching Deal Execution Enterprise Global Business Services 35% boost in deal velocity 45% growth in deal size The challenge Healthcare information powerhouse Elsevier faced challenges in optimizing efficiency in its sales team’s workflows. The company also needed a better way for its managers to access deal information that could help them support their reps — and close bigger deals. The outcome Using Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform, Elsevier’s sales team achieved incredible productivity gains in their workflows. This led to a 35% increase in deal velocity and a 45% growth in deal size when managers were involved in deals in Gong. headquarters Amsterdam, North Holland founded 1880 company size 10,000+ inDustry IT Services and IT Consulting No one understands deep market changes like a 145-year-old company. Just ask the people at Elsevier. Long a powerhouse in the publishing world, Elsevier now specializes in data tools that empower health researchers and clinicians to achieve better outcomes. Internally, Elsevier also uses solutions that help its employees — notably, its sales reps — achieve more. In fact, when Elsevier’s 120 North American sales reps and its managers started using the Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform to manage their deals, they became incredibly productive. Reps boosted their average deal velocity by 35% and increased the size of their deals by 45% when managers are involved. Tim McGee is Elsevier’s VP Global Sales Operations, where he equips his teams with the tools they need to do their jobs efficiently. “Gong has become an essential part of our go-to-market operation.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier Here’s how Tim and his team use revenue intelligence to get double-digit results. Productivity boosts Elsevier’s deal velocity by 35% “The impact Gong has had on our rep productivity is enormous,” says Tim. “We’re able to close deals 35% faster today because of it.” Gong has boosted Elsevier’s productivity and deal velocity simultaneously, through workflow efficiencies. The sales team Tim supports is more efficient now that their reps are using key insights identified by Gong’s Call Spotlight to shape how they tackle deals. They can easily clarify pain points, outcomes, and next steps, and create effective offers faster to keep deals moving. The managers on the sales team also use Gong to quickly understand key data about their reps’ deals, including risk factors that might jeopardize those deals. “Gong has enabled managers and reps to be closer to our deals, which ultimately results in their being more effective in closing those deals, driving win rates, and closing larger deals. Ultimately, they attain sharper conversion rates.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier Sales managers no longer have to ask for updates about deals — they’re empowered to go right into Gong’s Deal Board and immediately understand what’s happening. They can share key information with relevant people at Elsevier and remove the barrier of asking reps for deal updates. Pairing that with reading Gong AI-generated summaries instead of listening to dozens of phone calls means significant time savings. That time saved enables managers to do what they do best — coach reps to move the right deals forward, quickly. Plus, with Gong’s insights, managers know exactly who needs coaching, when, and why. It’s all added up to a 35% improvement in deal velocity. AI optimizes pipeline conversion and enables a 45% increase in deal size Tim says that Gong AI plays a major role in giving Elsevier faster and more accurate updates on deals. Reps are also closing larger deals thanks to better coaching from their managers, stemming from Gong AI. “When managers get involved in a customer engagement within Gong, we see a 45% increase in the deal size.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier (With results like that, it’s not surprising that Tim’s managers have a 95% engagement rate with the platform!) The feature managers will use the most is Ask Anything, where they can input any question — say, “Is this deal going to close?” — and immediately get a reliable response from Gong AI. Managers can use Ask Anything and Gong’s Deal Board to get insights into customer interactions, and “identify the yellow lights,” as Tim puts it. That is, they’re spotting risks that can affect any deal, whether it’s for a new buyer or a renewal. Managers use this information to guide deals back on track and focus reps’ efforts where they’ll be most effective. It’s made for a “cleaner and more active pipeline,” according to Tim. Workflow: Customer-centric innovation and alignment “The biggest impact Gong has had on our business is removing the subjectivity of the voice of the customer.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier That statement is explained by two enhancements across the team: The ability to shore up their incredibly important renewal base. Using the voice of the customer in other areas of the business beyond sales, including the product and go-to-market teams. Elsevier now uses the voice of the customer to build new products and enhance existing ones stemming from customer feedback shared across teams via Gong. “We have more than 200 global users outside the sales team. The inputs they get from Gong inform product decisions and help us build our commercial strategies and market to our customers more effectively.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier Access to the voice of the customer has also heightened organizational effectiveness around account handoffs. No one drops the ball when a customer moves from sales to customer success. It’s easy for everyone to get fully briefed on the history of a deal, account, or contact — and in a fraction of the time it used to take. Elsevier reimagines work using Gong AI “Gong’s AI is powerful, accurate, and frankly, a game changer.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier Elsevier’s team has expanded their use of Gong from conversion rates and deal size to its entire ecosystem. “It’s fully integrated into the way that we work at Elsevier.” The company is getting the most out of Gong, and will continue to make improvements on top of its 35% boost in deal velocity and 45% increase in deal values. Gong is Elsevier’s key partner in bringing efficiency to the forefront of its global sales team’s workflows and ensuring the success of its go-to-market initiatives. The end result is greater success — and higher revenue — at Elsevier. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one A focused forecast: How Filtered increased its ACV by 62% Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa Software Business Financing Leader Funding Circle Credits Gong With More Successful Customer Interactions Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives Global Business Financing How Addepar onboards new hires 60% faster with Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software

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How SpotOn increased win rates by 16% through productivity gains

Hannah Hapin — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 02:09:53 +0000

How SpotOn increased win rates by 16% through productivity gains Coaching Engage Enterprise North America Software 30% Increase in revenue per rep 95% Forecast accuracy 16% Increase in win rates The challenge SpotOn launched a new inside sales team to expand the company’s pipeline growth. The team’s leadership immediately identified a need for insights they could use to convert more opportunities and improve workflows. The outcome SpotOn’s sales team hit their revenue targets — and is now passing them — after using Gong to enhance their sales engagement workflows and pipeline management. They saw a 16% increase in win rates and a 30% increase in revenue per rep, hitting 95% forecast accuracy with Gong. Headquarters San Francisco, CA founded 2017 company size 3,000+ industry Software Development Gong’s AI allows our sellers to work a lot smarter, not just harder. Matt McGonegle Director of Inside Sales That’s SpotOn, we’d say. More than an apt turn of phrase, SpotOn is also a point-of-sale technology and software provider for SMBs across the United States, with a particular focus on restaurants. They recently adjusted their annual revenue goals upward — an enviable move that came after adopting the Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform to enhance their inside sales team’s engagement workflows and pipeline management. Just three months after adopting Gong, they’ve seen a 16% increase in win rates, a 30% increase in revenue per rep, and 95% accuracy in their sales forecasts. Matt McGonegle is the Director of Inside Sales at SpotOn — a team that’s entirely new to the company, designed to grow their pipeline. (Previously, their sales reps were only in the field.) From the start, the team has found Gong to be a trusted partner in decision-making. “Gong makes it possible to quickly prove a theory about any of our new workflows,” says Matt. That’s earned them better results than anyone anticipated. Team productivity skyrockets, thanks to AI Matt has seen productivity wins on his team right out of the gate, with a 60% reduction in the time it takes to onboard new hires. They get up to speed faster, and are more productive in less time. This is even happening alongside improvements in his reps’ sales engagement activities. As Matt puts it, “Everyone knows that following up with a personalized email is the right thing to do, but it eats up a tremendous amount of time.” It’s not feasible at scale, unless you use Gong’s AI. Today, Gong generates a call brief — as part of a larger call summary — for every call. Gong’s gen AI uses information from that brief whenever a rep clicks on Gong’s gen AI to automatically craft a personalized follow-up email. Matt’s reps save hours of time every week using these features. This process also keeps them in control of their deal cycles, as quick personalization improves the frequency and quality of their follow ups. What’s more: Instead of using a certain number of dials per day as their productivity measure, SpotOn’s entire sales team — from reps to sales leaders — now focuses on call outcomes. That’s because they have easy access to key metrics, such as how objections were handled, relevant next steps, and more. They also use Smart Trackers to measure the quality of conversations, watching to see if reps use the right messaging in a conversation. If they don’t, they know it’s time for some coaching. “Gong’s AI is mind blowing. In just three short months, I feel like I know more about what’s going on in my team’s sales cycle than I did in the previous nine months of working with them. Their productivity is incredible.” —Matt McGonegle, Director of Inside Sales, SpotOn Customized messaging leads to 30% pipeline growth SpotOn’s sales reps are already creating 30% more opportunities at the top of the funnel and converting 20% more of those. This is the result of focusing on workflow improvements that are made possible by Gong’s unified platform. For example, Matt’s team optimizes their flows by segment, knowing that slight changes to messaging have a powerful impact. The more the prospect identifies with the wording used in calls, the better. “Being able to nail those key messages at the right time and map that process in a repeatable way has led to giant growth in our pipeline.” —Matt McGonegle, Director of Inside Sales, SpotOn They’re also using Gong Engage’s generative AI to draft follow-up emails that mirror the language prospects use on calls, so the emails resonate more deeply with the prospect. And as Matt points out, generative AI is also great for overcoming writer’s block when every moment matters. Prospecting with Gong Engage has also helped the team create relevant messaging that contains a sense of urgency, which, as Matt puts it, “keeps us in the fight more often.” SpotOn is in a competitive space that is constantly evolving, so having a finger on the market’s pulse means the team can create timely messaging. They’re able to heighten the stakes for prospects around the urgent need for a solution, which keeps SpotOn at the forefront of prospects’ minds. Pipeline prioritization enables 95% forecast accuracy “Gong helps us be ruthless in our pipeline prioritization. After all, we need an accurate forecast. Otherwise, what’s the point of having one?” —Matt McGonegle, Director of Inside Sales, SpotOn Using Gong for forecasting has already paid massive dividends; the team is 95% accurate to their forecast every month. That’s a 20% lift in accuracy since they started using Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform, and only helps prove the reliability and value of the new inside sales team. This improvement comes from having a more realistic understanding of every deal in the pipeline. If Gong highlights issues in one deal that might throw the forecast, Matt’s reps can use interaction data and the Deal Spotlight feature to find out what’s putting that deal at risk and address it, or remove it from the forecast. This removes reps’ gut feelings from forecasts and replaces them with the voice of the customer. With a realistic view of the pipeline, it’s easy to bring deals back on track, or know when to cut bait and when to go into prospecting mode to hit the target. Creating a valuable revenue engine With no playbooks, workflows, or proven processes for his new inside sales reps, Matt believed that the right solution would build the foundation they needed. It’s a bet that certainly paid off. SpotOn has successfully used Gong to take their revenue growth to higher heights than they ever anticipated. “Having one platform for every aspect of our sellers’ jobs creates insane efficiency for us. Our revenue growth has been astounding.” —Matt McGonegle, Director of Inside Sales, SpotOn Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one simPRO Empowers Hybrid Sales and a Culture of Accountability in a Global Workforce Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Asia-Pacific Software How Greenhouse reaped a 281% surge in new product ARR using Gong’s AI Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software Upwork’s RevOps team rockets to 95% sales forecast accuracy using Gong Small Business Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software

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How BlueGrace’s reps got an 88% lift in reply rates using Gong Engage

Hannah Hapin — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 17:53:33 +0000

How BlueGrace’s reps got an 88% lift in reply rates using Gong Engage Coaching Deal Execution North America Business Services 88% Increase in reply rates 52% Increase in calls and email execution The challenge BlueGrace needed to boost its pipeline and conversion rates in a competitive market. When “spray-and-pray” outreach tactics didn’t work, they turned to Gong Engage — a full-cycle sales engagement solution — to fully transform their sales engagement workflows and improve coaching. The outcome BlueGrace sellers now use Engage to create higher-quality outreach that gets 88% more responses. Engage’s workflow efficiency gains and AI-backed, prioritized to-do lists help those same reps execute 52% more calls and emails, and touch 49% more accounts. headquarters Riverview, FL Founded 2009 Company size 700+ industry Transportation & Storage Self-driving vehicles aren’t the only groundbreaking innovation happening in the transportation space. Something astounding happened this past year at BlueGrace Logistics, a logistics technology, freight management, and customized transportation management company with more than 10,000 customers across the United States. BlueGrace Logistics used Gong Engage to transform their selling motions and boost pipeline flowthrough and conversion rates. The increase they received in outreach reply rates was outstanding: “Since we launched Gong Engage, our outreach response rates have increased from 16% to 30%. That’s an 88% boost.” —Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales, BlueGrace Logistics It was exactly what BlueGrace needed, but couldn’t achieve without the right sales engagement solution. Before Engage, BlueGrace’s full-cycle sellers worked in legacy tools that forced them into disjointed sales engagement workflows. Critically, the workflows didn’t support the personalization that’s essential to winning deals in this sector. Sellers wasted time on admin tasks and tool switching, and struggled to prioritize revenue-generating activities. Despite their efforts, they ran low-quality engagement and got poor response rates. Making matters worse, BlueGrace’s sales leaders had limited visibility into their sellers’ onboarding and performance, so coaching was a guessing game. That opaqueness was only compounded by siloed teams and fragmented data, making it so sales leaders couldn’t access the analytics they needed to run day-to-day operations or make critical business decisions. BlueGrace’s sales engagement system was broken… until they consolidated their people, data, and workflows in one unified platform: Gong. Streamlined workflows enable 88% more replies Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales at BlueGrace, was ready to eliminate the often-used but rarely effective “spray-and-pray” tactics that were a mainstay on his team. It was time to shift from quantity to quality engagement. That meant leaving the team’s legacy tools behind. Today, his full-cycle reps manage their entire lead-to-close sales process in Gong. “We live in Gong. It’s our sales team’s primary solution for their day-to-day work. All our outreach, daily planning, Scorecards, metrics, and performance management happens in Gong.” — Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales, BlueGrace Logistics Bryce’s teams now use streamlined flows for activities, events, and key industries, all of which include email templates and phone scripts that can be personalized. The workflow is more efficient and the customer journey is tailored and cohesive from first touch to close. These workflow improvements moved BlueGrace’s reply rates by 88% (from 16% to 30%). The sales (and revenue) teams see their Salesforce data in Gong’s “Deals” board, which helps with precise pipeline management. Everyone updates their opportunities and revenue predictions directly in Gong, so there’s no platform switching. This gives BlueGrace’s customers a smooth, high-quality experience that helps close more deals. Improved productivity drives 52% more actions and 49% more accounts touched Today, Bryce’s sellers spend more time selling. (Good thing too: According to Forrester, sales reps usually spend 77% of their time on non-selling activities.) Since adopting Engage, BlueGrace sellers execute 52% more sales calls and emails, and touch 49% more accounts. How are they achieving such outstanding results? With help from Gong’s proprietary AI models. Gong’s AI-powered workflows help users save time while staying up to date on their key deal activities. With generated call summaries and prioritized daily to-do lists, for example, sellers spend less time on administrative tasks and more time making calls and sending personalized emails. With Gong’s full visibility into the highlights and next best steps in each account, sales leaders have the insights they need to coach their teams to more closed-won deals. Plus, leaders can quickly review call summaries and key performance metrics for any individual or deal. They’re covering more accounts than ever before, and getting great results. “Our recent class of new hires is getting 2x the expected revenue productivity, even in a challenging market. And we’re continuing to hire, which not a lot of companies can say right now. The only thing I can attribute that to is Gong.” —Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales, BlueGrace Logistics A single source of truth unifies the entire team The distributed nature of BlueGrace’s workforce previously made it hard to confirm that every team was using the same data. That’s not an issue anymore. Since Bryce brought his nine geographically dispersed teams and their data into a unified platform, everyone — from the frontlines to executives — is on the same page about pipeline health. They all have access to a single source of truth that provides them with the complete context of their customers’ and prospects’ accounts. That includes all of BlueGrace’s interactions and past actions with each account. Historically, Bryce’s teams struggled to get good front-end data about their sales activities. This made performance management and pipeline predictability very difficult, as everything was based on anecdotal or self-reported information. Now, BlueGrace’s sales teams have coachable insights at their fingertips. As Bryce says, “Gong has become our single source of truth for performance management.” Having everyone in one platform also means Bryce can build flows for sales teams or pursuit groups, with leaders in different departments and locations contributing to those flows. “That’s been critical. As we scale our sales team in multiple locations, we need a place to collaborate. Gong is the community for my sales teams. We can be anywhere in the world and still be part of that community.” —Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales, BlueGrace Logistics BlueGrace relies on Gong in a challenging market BlueGrace has had so much success transforming their workflows and coaching with Engage that, even in the current market, they’re growing their business and hiring new reps. With an 88% lift in reply rates, they understandably need more sellers in their roster! In fact, they now use Gong as an incentive in their sales rep recruiting campaigns. Bryce even plans to build his upcoming sales KPI processes entirely on the platform. As he says, “The success is evident from at all levels of our organization, from the CEO down to our entry-level sales reps. We wouldn’t have the success we’re having today — in a very challenging market — if it wasn’t for our partnership with Gong.” Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one Alignment across RevOps and reps brings Frontify a 30% increase in lead conversion Small Business Deal Execution Engage Forecast Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software How Maggie Hott of Webflow uses Gong for Work-Life Balance Small Business Coaching North America Software How Temp Staffing Firm Kelly Services Got a 36% Lift in Placement Rates and 50% Faster Ramp Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Global Staffing & Recruiting

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Absorb Software sees 30% revenue boost by adopting gen AI for productivity gains and improving buyer experience

Hannah Hapin — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 19:34:16 +0000

Absorb Software sees 30% revenue boost by adopting gen AI for productivity gains and improving buyer experience Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Small Business North America Education 30% Increase in revenue The challenge Before adopting Gong, Absorb’s leadership team made many decisions based on the info that sales reps entered into Salesforce. They had to trust that the reps added the right info in a timely manner. Execs didn’t have functional visibility and the time it took to mine for insights was untenable. All this impeded Absorb’s growth trajectory. The outcome Absorb’s sales team is closing more deals by using Gong’s gen AI to power training sessions and refine sales strategies. They halved the time from a rep’s hire to their first sale. Best of all, total revenue is up by 30%. Headquarters Calgary, AB founded 2003 company size 500+ industry E-learning A whopping 77% of a rep’s precious time gets devoured by non-selling activities, as reported by Forrester. That’s a startling reality and it has repercussions for everyone in revenue-focused roles. Generative AI (gen AI) addresses this by delivering remarkable productivity and automated support to sales teams, so they can spend more time on selling activities. Absorb Software revamped its sales workflows by adopting Gong’s gen AI (purpose built for revenue teams), thus increasing the coaching time available to sales reps and propelling productivity gains. We talked with Absorb’s Senior Sales trainer, Kerry Heilskov, to hear about these wins first hand and how they increased revenue by 30%. Let the highlights spark ideas for how you might use AI to improve win rates in your role. Turning limited visibility into actionable insights Absorb Software is a global leader in learning solutions, and their learning management system (LMS) revolutionizes onboarding and learning engagement. Kerry oversees the onboarding and ongoing development of Absorb’s sales professionals. She’s devoted to ensuring that Absorb reps have the training they need to improve the buyer’s journey and quickly drive new and recurring revenue. Before Gong, Kerry says “life wasn’t good.” Senior managers made decisions based solely on the info that reps did or didn’t put into Salesforce. There was “no real visibility.” Tasked with significant growth, Absorb’s sales team hit pause to find a platform that could help them save time and enhance decision-making. Absorb adopted Gong, a choice Kerry credits with contributing to a 30% increase in revenue. The Call Spotlight feature has been the real standout for the team — they can’t imagine going back to not having it. Call Spotlight focuses your attention on the critical aspects of a call, helping you understand all the key details without listening to an entire conversation. Plus, it delivers actionable insights instead of basic summaries. Unlocking sales excellence in workflows Gen AI has fully reshaped Absorb’s sales workflows, resulting in stronger communication and high performance. Here are the top ways the sales team is closing more deals using Call Spotlight: Meeting mastery and coachable moments Preparing for meetings now takes 80% less time. Sales leaders review three times as many calls in less time. The best part? They hone in on the key parts of a call to deliver timely spot coaching, which has accelerated high performance. Crafting compelling follow-ups Sales reps use the AI’s suggestions for impactful follow-up emails. Call Spotlight integrates pertinent details from the discussions into the emails, guiding buyers towards action, then team members simply customize the email to align with their individual style and tone. This eliminates the challenge of figuring out what to say, and prevents deals from slipping through the cracks. Collaborating to close deals Call Spotlight facilitates seamless collaboration between account execs and solution engineers. Call synopses pinpoint customer pain points and show exactly what to cover in demos to improve the buyer’s journey. Teams use Call Spotlight’s Ask Anything feature to uncover the business problems behind a customer’s tech problem. Asking straightforward questions like, “What business problem is the customer trying to solve?” can provide deep insights into the customer’s needs and culture. With that knowledge, the team sells a wider range of solutions grounded in value. This approach leads to more and larger deals closed. Adoption and getting results If you want to unearth AI’s full potential, Kerry recommends “showing your team the power of the tool.” She devised an activity that requires reps to document a call’s highlights and next steps. This activity takes them more than one hour to complete manually, but only two minutes with Call Spotlight. Once a rep experiences this time saving, they quickly incorporate the tool into their workflows. It’s a no-brainer. The best part? Now, you can enrich your CRM with Call Spotlight data and insights. This means your reps won’t spend countless hours on manual data entry instead of selling to customers. “Throughout my sales career, sellers have always asked for an assistant. Well, Gong is your assistant! Call Spotlight reduces our follow-up and documentation time by as much as 96%. Experiment with it. Those who use it will always outperform the rest.” If you want to harness the time-saving power of gen AI with your team, we’d love to show you Call Spotlight. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one How the Customer Success Team at Momentive used Gong to shape high-quality customer conversations Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives North America Software How Maggie Hott of Webflow uses Gong for Work-Life Balance Small Business Coaching North America Software Leveraging Revenue Intelligence to Drive Conversions and Build a Growth Mindset Small Business Coaching North America Software

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BairesDev is 7x more productive at strategic decision-making with Gong.

Hannah Hapin — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 17:04:15 +0000

BairesDev is 7x more productive at strategic decision-making with Gong. Coaching Deal Execution Enterprise Global Software 7x more efficient reporting The challenge Having insights related to its prospects’ objections, customer satisfaction, inefficiencies, the competitive landscape, market trends, and more is critical for BairesDev’s growth and longevity. Finding these meant wading through a sea of disconnected Zoom recordings, Google Sheets, and dashboards — a manual, weeks-long process. It was impossible to deliver real-time guidance to reps and client services. It was also impossible to quickly respond to shifts in the market. The outcome BairesDev responds to market insights in record time. Gong is helping drive efficiency, revenue growth, and better decisions. It makes constant tweaks to onboarding, training, and sales processes. Ops leaders and customer-facing teams now see keyword trends and outliers daily in one place. They know what top performers do better and how to nudge others toward the same results. Experiencing Gong’s value, BairesDev now uses it for innovative use cases in areas like talent acquisition and sourcing venture capital partners. headquarters San Francisco, CA founded 2009 company size 3,000+ industry IT Services and Consulting If you’re a senior leader in revenue operations, your brain is always running scenarios. You’re constantly considering how to grow revenue with existing customers while locking in new ones. Monika Owczarek is the VP of Strategic Sales Processes at BairesDev and she’s just like you. “My job is to look across the entire business to drive growth. Gong is an essential part of that by helping us understand the interactions we’re having with leads and clients.” See if you can steal a page out of BairesDev’s RevOps playbook. Innovative tech companies need cutting-edge systems BairesDev is a global software development and staffing company with over 4,000 engineers in 50+ countries. It matches software developers with clients all over the world and supplies the top 1% of tech talent in the Americas. But it couldn’t get automated data-backed insights from all its customer interactions, in one platform. With more clarity around a prospect’s unique pain points and objections, it suspected it could significantly improve win rates. Similarly, it felt that automating analysis of calls with existing customers would reveal opportunities to improve quality and therefore, drive better retention and growth. It wasn’t wrong. Choosing to always be at the front of the AI wave Like everyone, these days Monika is paying close attention to what’s happening with AI. She knows it will help BairesDev solve challenges in ways it can’t even predict right now. Part of her company’s competitive advantage will come from adopting and experimenting with the new tech. So, when Monika decided to bring on revenue intelligence software, it had to be with a company that’s always been AI-first. BairesDev chose Gong for its powerful automation, AI models, and exceptional support. As the industry leader in revenue intelligence, Monika says BairesDev felt Gong would always be ahead of the rest. “Gong is at the forefront of AI development. It’s innovating and adapting the product and capabilities to fit the needs of different businesses. We know this will shape our processes and define how we operate in the future.” Mountains of manual reporting? Gone with Gong BairesDev’s sales and client services teams were the first to praise Gong’s benefits. Before adopting Gong, leaders manually reviewed transcripts from Zoom calls to uncover business insights. This was hugely time-consuming which meant sometimes, other priorities took over. Moreover, each leader’s distinct approach meant that gauging team performance and sizing market opportunities lacked consistency. Monika credits Gong with helping to more accurately predict revenue by capturing comprehensive insights in an automated way. Gong also reveals what BairesDev’s top performers do differently. Every week it finds trends in calls by team and by rep. These shape the types of training it delivers and how it adapts to market forces. “The data from Gong helps us make strategic decisions about our processes, our people, and how to adapt to the marketplace. We now see trends and what’s happening in the economy as a whole in terms of what’s important to our clients or our prospects and then being able to react based on that information.” Thanks to Gong’s rich, unified data, BairesDev’s revenue team is 7x more efficient with reporting. Better handoffs mean better client retention and growth One of the more impactful outcomes of BairesDev using Gong is the customer interaction dataset that supports cross-team visibility, collaboration, and alignment. Why? A pivotal moment in a customer’s journey is when they transition from sales to client services. Built over many conversations, sales intimately understands the customer’s unique situation — their pains, fears, and goals. It’s easy for this understanding to get lost during a handoff. Not anymore. Gong’s generative AI gives everyone understanding of customer context with at-a-glance summaries in every conversation. Teams can start acting on critical insights from customer interactions right away. Monika says sales and client services are working more closely together and the result is clear! BairesDev proves the benefit of using Gong across their business. By replacing manual effort with automation using Gong and gaining 7x the speed of finding insights, BairesDev started asking “where else can we use this software?” It quickly applied Gong’s power in unexpected ways. Now, it’s proving that you can even use Gong to hire your next superstar. Today, BairesDev’s talent acquisition specialists rely on Gong to unearth valuable insights from interview calls with potential employees. Gong has helped them drive consistency in interview quality to create a better quality hiring experience. In its venture capital arm, Gong delivers AI-driven insights to improve investment outcomes. For example, Gong captures interactions with potential partners and provides insights into the quality of conversations, leading to informed decision-making, faster due diligence, risk mitigation, and improved portfolio management. What a win! Once you have Gong, you’ll unleash its power across every facet of your business too. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one Locking in predictable revenue: Gong takes Piano’s forecast accuracy to 90% Enterprise Deal Execution Global Software Intelex enhances onboarding and collaboration to strengthen sales strategy Small Business Coaching Deal Execution North America Software A refined pipeline: EdgePetrol boosts their pipe feed by 300% with Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa Software

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How Gong enables sales leaders at GoTo to coach at scale

Hannah Hapin — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 02:44:20 +0000

How Gong enables sales leaders at GoTo to coach at scale Coaching Enterprise North America Software The challenge Prior to Gong, GoTo lacked the tools they needed to achieve their company goals quickly and efficiently. The outcome Now with Gong, GoTo’s leaders and sales teams can worry less about the manual work and upkeep it takes to run a sales org and instead focus on training and connection building. HEADQUARTERS Boston, Massachusetts FOUNDED 2003 COMPANY SIZE 3,000+ INDUSTRY Software Development Jill Harris, GoTo’s VP of RSG Sales, uses Gong to instill a coaching culture in her sales org. With a million things on her plate, Gong allows her to coach at scale and gives the framework to do so in an efficient way. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one Impact Cultivates a Sales Culture of Collaboration and Improvement Small Business Coaching Global Software How Gong Helps Babbel’s Multilingual Sales Team Achieve Their Goals Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Global Software How Zenefits increased their win rate by 3-5x using Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software

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How Temp Staffing Firm Kelly Services Got a 36% Lift in Placement Rates and 50% Faster Ramp

Hannah Hapin — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 22:16:04 +0000

How Temp Staffing Firm Kelly Services Got a 36% Lift in Placement Rates and 50% Faster Ramp Coaching Deal Execution Enterprise Global Staffing & Recruiting 50% Decrease in ramp time The challenge The surge in remote work put Kelly Services’s people-oriented approach in jeopardy. It needed a solution that could reconnect its internal teams around advanced insights for coaching and onboarding and provide them with a unified view of buyers’ accounts so customer journeys (and sales) remained strong. The outcome Thanks to Gong, Kelly Services ramped up its self- and manager-led coaching. This resulted in 50% faster ramp times and a 36% lift in the number of placements made with customers. headquarters Troy, Michigan founded 1946 company size 10,000+ industry Staffing & Recruiting “Everyone is competing for the same talent. We need to stand out.” That’s not a throwaway statement from Brad Sibbald, Senior Vice President, Science Domain Leader at Kelly Services, a global leader in HR and staffing services. He means it. The HR and staffing industry has faced seismic shifts in recent years: 2x more jobs than talent available, increased competition across the 25,000 staffing and HR firms in the US, and a move to remote work. All three changes impacted Kelly Services, but the move to more digital interactions affected the team the most. It had the potential to really disrupt their organizational effectiveness, particularly where pipeline management was concerned. That’s because it happened at a time when the industry was moving from having an influx of business to requiring highly polished sales skills to win new clients. If Kelly Services was going to stand out from the competition, its leaders know they’d need to focus on upskilling talent and retraining sales skills based on the current market and macro economic state. And they’d need to do it while facing increased pressure to find efficiency gains and win business faster. That’s why Kelly Services went all in on Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform — to lean into better, more connected insights and more unified selling. Gong provided actionable insights to grow pipeline and drive higher margins Gong’s AI-powered insights transformed how Kelly Services managed their pipeline. The team even called it their “Sales Excellence Platform” for the noticeable change in selling behavior it created. Reps began to source and develop pipeline around higher margin services and products. Initially, Kelly Services used a Gong Smart Tracker to better understand how well (and frequently) reps were pushing for conversations to open the door to “higher authority” people. The data didn’t lie — the behavior wasn’t happening as often as expected. This insight helped inform a need for more coaching on multi-threading (i.e., connecting with multiple people inside the buyer’s organization to help drive the deal). It worked and eventually led to more growth with high-margin services. The move to Gong also helped Kelly Services leaders gain more real-time visibility into deals in flight. Kelly Services had long used the industry standard of a CRM backend coupled with an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) database. Gong’s front-end technology helped separate Kelly Services from the rest of the crowd. John Giseburt, VP of Strategic Enablement, said, “We needed to upscale our sales team … we needed the visibility to ‘watch’ them talk.” Pre-Gong, Kelly Services used “old” sales coaching, i.e., role-playing. “Gong flipped role-play into ‘real’ play. We have actual game tape to review now,” said Brad. While slightly skeptical initially, sellers quickly went all in on Gong as they began reviewing their own game tape. Suddenly, a lot of introspection was happening. Sellers also reviewed their peers’ game tapes and started mimicking the top reps, incorporating valuable moves into their conversations. Increased efficiency: 50% faster ramp and 36% higher placement rates John said it best: “With Gong, we’ve seen a 36% lift in fill rate, with shorter times to close. That means we’re placing more talent in our accounts and creating a better experience for our customers.” This resulted from using Gong’s platform to manage pipeline more efficiently. For example, with increased visibility into customer interactions across every account, sales leaders know exactly who each rep is talking to, about what, and when, and whether they’ve discussed the right topics. Having this information across multiple sales reps in different territories who are all selling into the same account means both reps and managers are better able to collaborate without relying on subjective or biased notes in the CRM. Sales leaders were also better able to track how much pipeline was at risk because of poor qualification. If reps aren’t asking the right qualifying questions, leaders are able to identify how and when to de-risk, before it becomes too late. In a rapidly changing industry, this meant Kelly Services could overcome critical shifts and set their revenue teams up for success to stand out from the competition. Moreover, with key information available to everyone in one place, there was less friction during internal knowledge transfers. That helped teams move clients more smoothly between delivery and sales. The tighter candidate experience meant a faster time to close. Recruiters also used Gong to accelerate the intake process, which took at least one or two hours off both the reps’ and recruiters’ calendars. Gong helps recruiters better differentiate between roles, write better job descriptions, and sell candidates into those roles. (And analyze and understand their losses if there are any.) These same capabilities in Gong also contributed to a 50% faster ramp time for new reps. Before Gong, getting new hires — with no previous knowledge of the staffing industry and limited technical knowledge — up to speed took at least six months. Gong’s insights cut that time in half. Today, new reps, “know how to effectively do their job, how to speak their clients’ language, and how to talk to them about their job specification needs in under 90 days to close business sooner.” Reps are also receiving up-to-date information about what works on calls, so they can incorporate those winning moves into their processes. The connectedness and ease with which information is now shared benefits internal teams as well as the customers they serve. Pay it forward: Advice for other industry leaders The team at Kelly Services is thrilled with Gong. The leadership team is certainly reaping the benefits of advanced visibility into its pipeline and AI-backed insights into what goes on in customer interactions. Gong’s consolidated platform keeps everyone up to date on what’s working, which makes it easier to achieve consistently positive behaviors. (This consolidated approach is also very helpful in terms of business continuity and creating an accurate database of every client interaction.) Whether it’s on their own or with support from a manager, employees are tapping into Gong’s AI-backed insights to onboard faster and hit higher fill rates. The team is excited to expand its use cases for Gong while focusing on the people-centered approach at the core of the company’s mission. As a fully-fledged Gong user, Brad had some words of wisdom for other industry leaders: “Get comfortable with this new technology. Embrace it, and take advantage of the AI workflows. Just remember, you still need to be personal and have a human touch.” As John said, “Don’t underestimate your team, your culture. Some of our earliest detractors of Gong are now its biggest advocates. Once they ‘saw the light,’ they went all in.” Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one ComplyAdvantage uses Gong to decrease ramp time by 50% Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Europe/Middle East/Africa Software A focused forecast: How Filtered increased its ACV by 62% Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa Software Unlocking reality: Cognism improves org-wide visibility using Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa Software

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How the Datarails team used Gong to develop a whopping 300% increase in ARR

Hannah Hapin — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:15:15 +0000

How the Datarails team used Gong to develop a whopping 300% increase in ARR Coaching Strategic Initiatives Small Business Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software 300% Increase in ARR The challenge DataRails has a product that exists in a crowded space. Their challenge is to build awareness of the brand and demonstrate how the platform stands out from the competition. The outcome The Marketing team uses Gong to understand their audience and the true voice of customers. They use this uncovered knowledge to construct impactful campaigns that better target their audience and keep them ahead of competition. headquarters New York, New York founded 2015 company size 150+ industry Software Development Written by Jonathan Marciano, Director of Communications at Datarails Do you remember the popular 80s cartoon “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” When Prince Adam transformed into the muscle-bound hero, he shouted, “I have the power!” But did you know that the phrase came from a kid? Market researchers were listening to children playing with their He-Man toys and they heard one of the kids say, “I have the power.” They pulled it into the animated series and the rest, as they say, is history. I experienced a He-Man moment with my Datarails marketing team. Using the Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform, our marketers had the power to listen to our customers and use their words to influence action and guide products — and create an incredibly successful marketing campaign. Even as adults, we form connections with fictional characters and public figures, and we love it when they say what we’re thinking. That was the magic ingredient behind Datarails’s “Hollywood Stars Narrate financial planning and analysis (FP&A) Processes” viral video, and a campaign that put the words of financial professionals in the mouths of popular television stars. It was a He-Man-level moment for our marketing team, and one whose lessons we’ve carried forward with us. We focused on an under-recognized role to build awareness in a crowded space Datarails is a fast-growing company. Our FP&A platform automates financial reporting in Excel. It uses machine learning and AI to consolidate and analyze data in multiple Excel spreadsheets, then transform it into easy-to-understand charts and graphs. It gives financial professionals advanced analytics capabilities without giving up their most trusted tool, Excel. Our product exists in a crowded space. My challenge as Director of Communications is to build awareness of our brand, demonstrate how our platform stands out from the competition, and generate excitement about a potentially dry subject. I wanted to inject humor and humanity into FP&A because the people who use it in their work aren’t often in the spotlight. Their manual processes aren’t as exciting as strategic work, so nobody talks much about their pains and passions or thinks too much about the personalities of these professionals. We wanted to change that. How we started using Gong in our marketing to channel the voice of our customers The “Hollywood Stars” campaign was powered by Gong, an innovative platform that captures customer interactions to gather data that we can turn into strategic insights. Gong integrates with CRM software and uses AI models to analyze calls and trends, determine market dynamics, and suggest next steps. It’s a powerful tool that helps sales representatives and revenue teams increase conversion rates. Buyers offer up a lot of information when they talk to sales reps. They may mention what’s bothering them about a product, but just as often they’ll share that they’re having a bad day, or that their kid scored a home run in yesterday’s Little League game. Analyzing people’s actual words provides deeper insights than having them answer the pre-written questions on a customer satisfaction survey and trying to interpret the results. Given the power of the platform, I thought, “Why not use it for marketing?” It seemed like the perfect solution to help me discover and channel the voice of the customer. In marketing, you have to understand your audience and speak their language. Otherwise, your campaigns will miss the mark. In marketing, you have to understand your audience and speak their language. Otherwise, your campaigns will miss the mark. I’d heard about Gong before joining Datarails in 2021, but this was my first opportunity to leverage it. Gong allows leaders across an organization to capture insights from customer interactions and hear what customers have to say. Marketing professionals like me can use its keyword trackers and Smart Trackers (the latest AI in concept tracking) to spot emerging trends and identify potential thought leaders among our customers. I use it frequently to gain visibility into what our users think, see, and feel when they engage with our product. For example, when I first joined Datarails, I heard a conversation in which a CEO wanted their company to phase out Excel. As a finance person, it was her worst nightmare. This real-life story was sure to resonate with Datarails customers, so I turned it into a social post (with anonymized content, of course) about the anxieties of FP&A professionals who are asked to swap their primary work tool for something “a little more modern.” A campaign using real customer interactions tripled our ARR by 300% That early post led to the “Hollywood Stars” campaign. I thought it would be fun to have television actors reenact customer calls about Datarails and Excel. Whether it’s sports, movies, music, or work, we’ve all had friends’ and colleagues’ eyes glaze over when we talk about something we love or find frustrating. We decided to take complaints that others found dull and transform them by having Hollywood actors express them out of context. This campaign would allow us to share our customers’ pain points in a language our audience understands and appreciates but that is tedious to the outside world — chopping and manipulating data and the kind of stuff FP&A professionals find fascinating. Imagine a hitman talking about spreadsheets or a ditzy teenager who can barely pronounce basic Excel functions, and you get the idea. HOLLYWOOD STARS NARRATE FP&A STRUGGLES We shared the campaign on LinkedIn, and FP&A professionals latched on. The video got more than 150 likes, shares, and reshares from industry professionals and received news coverage in top trade media, including an Accounting Today piece that generated 15 opportunities. We ran the campaign on a shoestring budget, spending $4,000 for television stars from The Sopranos, Clueless, Baywatch, and The West Wing, to act out actual customer dialogue retrieved from Gong. It was fabulous and fun. Those initial LinkedIn shares were the tip of the iceberg. People shared the campaign on WhatsApp and Slack, and that social exposure increased our follower count, further fueling requests for demos. We even heard that Gong’s team was sharing the video with other customers.But the campaign was more than viral fun. Brand content such as this helped Datarails grow our annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 300% last year. Insights let us make smart business decisions that prioritize our customers We also used Gong to create a fun video featuring one of our sales reps. “Days of our Lives with Robert Reis” edits footage of him talking about his wife and kids during customer interactions. It showcases his sense of humor and humanity as he shares personal anecdotes about family life to relate to Datarails’s customers and their professional struggles. This montage got a lot of traction on LinkedIn. Robert’s customers and colleagues commented on the video and shared it with their peers, who thought he was relatable. Once again, we humanized FP&A professionals and our brand using customer interactions from Gong that we knew would resonate. Every customer insight we gather from Gong provides us with more growth opportunities. We recently launched another campaign based on a sentiment that CFOs and finance professionals say in passing: that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do what they need to do. The idea came from searching for “clone” in Gong. I found so many people making off-the-cuff remarks like, “I wish I could clone myself,” and “I wish there were more of me.” We built the campaign, “Not a Clone,” around this idea which the media loved and it featured in Fortune and other news sites. It included a video and a portal where people can insert their LinkedIn picture and see five different “clones” of themselves. An online petition to ‘Make finance teams strategic leaders, not poor clones of themselves’ has been signed by nearly 1400 people including CEOs, COOs, and CFOs. A lot of the language from Gong is included in the campaign, and we’re collaborating with 10 other FP&A companies to spread the message. Gong’s direct access to customer concerns allows marketers to analyze and understand the metrics that mean the most to them. Datarails is a small company with only 200 employees, but our growth potential is massive because Excel is entrenched at so many companies worldwide. Despite our limited marketing budget, Gong gives us direct access to customer concerns, allowing us to analyze and understand the metrics that mean the most to them. With this clarity around what FP&A professionals and CFOs need to know about their businesses, we build Datarails automations that allow our users to extract relevant metrics and KPIs from their spreadsheets. Gong provides valuable business intelligence that helps us add these features and target our customers’ needs. Gong-based campaigns keep us ahead of the competition Great campaigns come from listening to customers. Gong has given me and the Datarails marketing team a way to get closer to our customers, allowing us to create content that resonates deeply with them. Our “Hollywood Stars” campaign began as a “wouldn’t it be funny if,” idea and turned into a hit. Gong was at the core of that campaign, and recognized our work with the Golden Gong Innovator Award. As a marketer, I realize that generating publicity and newsworthy stories means staying ahead of the curve, embracing changing markets, and adapting quickly to our customers’ needs. Customer data from Gong helps us spot new pain points before they enter the mainstream conversation — and before our competitors are aware they exist. Thanks to Gong, I can echo the words of He-Man and proudly say, “I have the power!” Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one How a Google sales team got hours of its time back using Gong Global Software SurveyMonkey takes coaching for customer success to the next level Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software LinkedIn Achieves Revenue Success with Gong Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Media & Internet

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How a Sales Talk Show Boosted ACV by 45% at Demandbase

Hannah Hapin — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 15:37:24 +0000

How a Sales Talk Show Boosted ACV by 45% at Demandbase Coaching Strategic Initiatives Enterprise North America Software 45% Increase in ACV The challenge The Sales Enablement team at Demandbase wanted to uncover new ways in which they could amplify the efficiencies and deal insights highlighted by Gong so others could learn from them as well. The outcome They created virtual sessions where reps would get live feedback on Gong calls. The results of these educational sessions were incredibly impactful in terms of rep productivity and overall efficiency. Headquarters San Francisco, California Founded 2006 Company size 815+ Industry Marketing Technology Written by Ray Owais, Principle Revenue Sales Enablement Manager @ Demandbase My dream as a kid was to grow up and become a film director. I loved creating and editing videos and telling stories, and I spent countless hours with a camcorder in my hand, trying to tell as many stories as possible. Though my name doesn’t grace Hollywood screens, I still love creating video content at home and in my sales enablement work to capture people’s attention and effectively communicate a message. There’s an emotional element to videos that — when used properly — lets the video’s creator drive action and get fantastic outcomes. In sales, we tell a story … but it’s video that can really make those stories more impactful by using emotions, music, and visuals to connect with the viewer. Because of my love for the art of video, I’m always looking for ways to incorporate it into my activities. I knew when I joined Demandbase in 2022 that this would be a key tool in how we moved forward. It was a great opportunity to rally our sales team around value messaging through the power of storytelling. How I keep my finger on the pulse of our business efficiency and sales enablement needs I signed on to a sales team in transition, and it wasn’t the right time to roll out new messaging, sales methodologies, or forecasting improvements. As I became familiar with my new role, I sought out the best way to add value in the midst of a lot of change. Luckily, Demandbase had an established relationship with Gong, and I began to spend a lot of time in the platform. Pretty soon, it became clear to me that I could add value to the sales team by using Gong to support their productivity and effectiveness. This proved to be true in my work with both managers and frontline reps. We have thousands of recorded customer interactions available in Gong, and the platform makes it easy to stay in touch with our sales team’s context and spot trends arising across thousands of their customer interactions. I can keep my finger on the pulse of our teams and ensure that I understand the issues they encounter in the market. When someone asks which team member can execute a particular technique especially well, it’s easy for me to answer because of the information surfaced by Gong. And when it’s time to create new enablement programs, Gong gives me the data I need to make those programs targeted and successful. The platform surfaces some amazingly productive sales moments for me, alongside plenty that aren’t so great. I wanted to amplify the efficiencies and deal insights highlighted by Gong so others could learn from them as well. “Gong GOATs Live” increased our uptake of best practices across the sales team Before Demandbase, I had experience running best practice sessions for sales teams. In our sessions, we shared knowledge and experiences so people could learn from others’ mistakes and successes. I wanted to take this idea further at Demandbase by making the format more interactive and using the video storytelling approach I knew was so powerful. I thought it would be great to relive some of our deal-winning moments together as a team. Since everyone wants to learn from a GOAT (Greatest of all Time), I launched Gong GOATs Live. During these live virtual sessions, I interviewed a sales rep and included space for audience participation. It felt like a late-night talk show! I’d ask the rep to set up the moment we were about to experience by telling us about the outcome they were trying to generate with the customer and the lesson(s) they learned. After we played the call snippet (a feature available in Gong), we’d open the floor and invite the audience to participate using one of the three Cs: They could offer a compliment, provide constructive criticism, or ask for clarity. Gong GOATs Live became something our sales teams looked forward to attending. It’s very easy to get into a silo as a sales rep, and these sessions were an opportunity to align with people on other teams. We ran the sessions biweekly, and they soon began to take on a life of their own, with managers running Gong GOATs Live sessions to boost productivity and efficiency on their respective teams. While we have taken a break from facilitating these recently, we have plans for them to make a comeback when we launch our methodology next year. We boosted annual contract values (ACVs) by 45% and opportunity values by 111% The Gong GOATS sessions are amazing. You can feel the connection-building happening in the room when we watch these videos together. That’s the result of clear story arcs that connect viewers to the reps, the prospects, the challenges, and the approaches our reps use. Plus, the results of these educational sessions are hard to beat! We saw some big wins based on our Gong usage: When Gong is used in an opportunity valued over $100K, win rates increased from 59.93% to 66.47%. Quarter over quarter, Gong adoption by both managers and reps increased. When a manager reviewed opportunities, the deal value increased by 111%. When the opportunity owner reviewed an opportunity, the deal value increased by 61%. Opportunities with any call reviewed in Gong increased the annual contract value (ACV) by 45%. Those were outstanding numbers for our sales teams. Productivity was high and our revenue numbers were climbing. Our meetings and follow up focus on connection, alignment, and replication Other success factors were less tangible but still meaningful. People have told us they feel like they’re getting to relate more with one another and have more shared experiences. This alignment across teams is important. Remote work can be lonely, so making time for meaningful connection matters. It also helps everyone stay on the same page in terms of our sales messaging and playbook, and keeps productive behaviors at the forefront of ICs’ minds. Gong GOATs Live has been an excellent opportunity to build our culture of feedback, sharing best practices, and coaching. We highlight moments when someone can easily replicate a winning technique to make it actionable. I might point out three tactics used in a call and ask the folks in the session which one they can add to their toolbox immediately. Their managers can then follow up — using Gong’s adoption tracking to help them, of course — and hold the reps accountable. By establishing positive sentiment and psychological safety, participants can collaborate and use Gong’s insights to solve common challenges, such as how to handle competitor mentions on a call. Gong’s features make all of this easy. For instance, its Smart Trackers allow us to track trends emerging across our customer interactions as well as the use of our approved messaging. If a manager gets an alert that a particular topic was discussed on a call, they can easily review that customer’s history. They can navigate backward and forward in the deal, which helps them understand its entire context quickly and efficiently. Gong’s smart guidance also identifies the action items reps should follow up on during the next call. Gong’s AI now supports our leadership team’s business decisions We’re now using Gong’s AI capabilities to keep our executive leadership team informed. For example, we use it to better understand market conditions and how they affect our ability to renew existing customers or attract new customers. (We have a Slack channel dedicated entirely to specific Trackers, and our C-Suite uses them regularly.) Understanding those market forces helps our leadership team make better-informed business decisions that affect how we run our frontline initiatives. They’re critically important to our future successes. We were proud to win a Golden Gong award for Gong GOATs Live; it’s been a great success. As we move forward with our Gong GOATs program, we have two priorities: We’ll use Gong to help us uncover what works in the deals we win as well as what moves deals through our sales cycle efficiently. We’ll share those insights in the Gong GOATs Live environment. We’ll also use the platform to drive accountability, especially when we adjust our messaging. Gong’s AI and Smart Trackers will be incredibly helpful in tracking new messaging adoption during rollouts and measuring changes in sentiment or deal speed. We’re also counting on Gong to help us learn more about our key personas and decision-maker engagement so we can adjust our messaging accordingly. I also want to build trust and psychological safety so we can review calls where there were challenges. That will help us go beyond “good” and dig into coaching opportunities that will make us even more productive. With Gong, I’m using my favorite medium — video — to help my sales team overcome challenges. It’s how we’re enriching our content, programs, and enablement. That’s what we’re all after, and we’re using Gong to get there. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one How Gong Became Diligent’s MVP by Increasing Close Rates by 7.4% Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software LinkedIn Achieves Revenue Success with Gong Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Media & Internet Glasses on! How Gong enables Drip to “See what’s Going on” and close more deals Small Business Coaching Deal Execution North America

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Winning what’s next: Global capital market research firm PitchBook is 10x more efficient with Gong

Hannah Hapin — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 17:47:48 +0000

Winning what’s next: Global capital market research firm PitchBook is 10x more efficient with Gong Coaching Enterprise Global Software The challenge PitchBook wanted to enhance its vast onboarding and training processes and gain real-time insights into its team performance and customer interactions. The outcome PitchBook’s customer success, account management, sales, product and revenue teams use Gong’s AI to power critical workflows and gain visibility into customer needs, information, and feedback to assess opportunities in the market. They also use Gong to provide new reps with best-in-class training and reduce onboarding by hours. HEADQUARTERS Seattle, Washington FOUNDED 2007 company size 4,000+ industry Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals PitchBook is a global enterprise with nearly 4,000 team members located across nine offices including Seattle, London, and Singapore. The company has nearly 1,000 reps globally across its sales, customer success, account management and support teams. As the leading resource for comprehensive data, research, and insights on global capital markets, the company turns to thousands of their client and prospect interactions to understand client needs, and inform its product roadmap. Paul Santarelli is the Chief Sales Officer at PitchBook. Needless to say, their industry is intricate and PitchBook products are profoundly sophisticated. With that in mind, Paul has leaned into providing his team with a quota-defying, AI-backed resource. It had to be one that could power critical workflows and drive efficient pipeline management, as well as ensure speedy and reliable decision-making. Paul identified three challenges to address: Legacy sales processes: Reps would book significant amounts of time to shadow calls, with no guarantee a client would show up. Inconsistent intel on outcomes and opportunities to adapt: Leaders needed timely information on what worked, what didn’t, and precisely where reps needed additional support. Centralized access to customer and market insights: The revenue teams needed an integrated platform where everyone could access critical business insights and build better product features. Gong makes PitchBook’s sales processes 10x more efficient Gong has helped transform PitchBook’s sales process into a well-oiled, high-performing machine. With help from Gong’s AI, everyone saves time. Reps spend less time trying to recall what they’ve communicated in the past and managers provide more timely and valuable feedback. Using Gong’s Trackers, managers are able to uncover coachable moments in mere minutes. It’s a 10x time saving that brings more efficiency and value to the sales process. There’s been an uptick in coaching and learning opportunities for both managers and reps. PitchBook estimates the time saved by Gong’s impactful workflows to be in the “hundreds, if not thousands,” of hours for managers and individual reps. Rather than hunting for hours for a “coachable moment,” managers can find one quickly and bring it into their training programs, 1:1s, and team meetings, or share it immediately with one person or the whole team using Call Snippets. “With Gong, we have real-time data at our fingertips.” That data comes from Gong Trackers, which provide advanced visibility into customer interactions with sellers and a valuable and scalable business process that is powered by external feedback: Reps rely on Trackers instead of spending hours of time listening to calls. Managers can provide strategic guidance to all their reps in less than an hour. The ability to call out best practices has also bolstered the speed and effectiveness of onboarding new hires. PitchBook leverages the voice of the market and customer through Gong In Paul’s words, “If you are not continuously learning about the industry, the market, or the product, key data insights will pass you by.” Gong’s industry-leading AI has helped PitchBook take a massive amount of unstructured information and turn it into highly actionable insights for sales, product, data, and research teams. “With help from Gong’s Trackers and insights into conversational data, we better understand our clients and prospects,” says Paul. “Gong insights help us learn, train our reps, and — most importantly — provide a better service to our customers and prospects. Working with Gong gives me confidence that we will succeed.” But it’s not just Paul and his sales team seeing the value in Gong’s integrated platform and powerful workflows. Quick adoption leads to immediate time savings and growth PitchBook also uses Gong to help share best-practice knowledge across the entire revenue organization, and it’s particularly useful when onboarding and training new sales and support reps. Adoption has been quick and extensive. Today, over 90% of the revenue team uses Gong in some way. Spreading best-practice knowledge both quickly and efficiently is essential to Brett Kaluza, the Chief Customer Officer at PitchBook. Responsible for account management, customer success, and support teams, Brett’s priorities are driving business and creating long-term value for customers. Creating, managing, and converting pipeline while also exceeding customers expectations has been easier since implementing Gong. “Gong was quick to implement, is easy to use and provides instant access to valuable information,” shared Brett. At peak hiring times, PitchBook may have 20-30 people starting monthly. Gong cuts 3-5 hours from each person’s onboarding process, saving up to 150 hours per month that would otherwise be spent trying to find best-in-class calls to review. “Gong has helped us take actionable, data-driven steps to transform our onboarding and scaling processes,” says Brett. It’s exactly what his team needed to drive their most valuable business workflows. Gong is helping PitchBook scale its business globally PitchBook supports customers all over the world. Gong’s AI capabilities are integral to exceeding customer needs around the globe, as Gong records conversations in 30+ languages. This multilingual ability means PitchBook can point the right employees to the right conversations (and vice versa) in their local language. Gong also allows Brett and his team to easily curate top-notch content for onboarding new employees in their rapidly growing Singapore office. The revenue intelligence platform is built to help enterprise-grade companies scale rapidly, and customize roll-outs to be more suitable local markets. Brett sees Gong as essential to PitchBook both today and in the future as they continue to scale globally. The Gong partnership provides PitchBook with a wealth of information about what works and what doesn’t, so the team can transform their most critical workflows. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. 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