Strategic Initiatives Archives - Gong

Visibility, collaboration, and predictability: LogicMonitor increases CSM capacity by 20%

Hannah Hapin — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 16:22:32 +0000

Visibility, collaboration, and predictability: LogicMonitor increases CSM capacity by 20% Strategic Initiatives Global Software 20% increase in CSM capacity in first 3 months 50% average reduction in follow-up time The challenge LogicMonitor wanted to elevate its customer experience, without adding customer success managers (CSMs) for every new customer or burning out existing ones. To provide customers with consistent value — no matter how big or small they are — LogicMonitor turned to Gong’s Revenue Intelligence platform and Gainsight integration. The outcome LogicMonitor CSMs save time by using Gong to gain insight into the full customer lifecycle, simplify playbooks, and drive proactive account guidance. The automated workflows they’ve created have led to an increase in productivity and helped influence the company’s growth in net revenue retention. headquarters Santa Barbara, CA founded 2007 company size 1,000+ industry Software Development “Our customers deserve nothing less than the best from our platform,” reads the company principles of LogicMonitor — and they have the customer satisfaction scores to prove that they practice what they preach. At 95% satisfaction, LogicMonitor’s AI-powered IT performance monitoring platform has the highest net promoter score of any IT infrastructure management provider. With clients as recognizable and varied as Topgolf, Carrier, Schneider Electric, and the Minnesota Vikings, the company strives to keep it that way. “My main priority is all about scaling the business. As a company, we’ve hit the point where we can’t just hire more and more CSMs. So, I’ve been tasked with making sure we can continue to provide that excellent customer experience.” — Jillian Bierman, Director of Customer Success, LogicMonitor How does a company ensure that they keep the magic of one-on-one connection and demonstrate sustainable value to its customers, but still maintain its trajectory of growth? In LogicMonitor’s case, they turned to Gong. LogicMonitor’s customer success team works smarter and more efficiently because — with Gong’s AI-powered platform — they now have a clearer picture of each account’s individual status, allowing them to focus on the right areas and save time on administrative work. As a result, the CSMs and customers are both happier. CSMs use Gong for coaching, tracking progression over time, identifying churn and growth opportunities, and even generating leads for their sales counterparts — all without being overworked or burnt out. This helps grow customer satisfaction in turn because the customers each get a more personalized and supportive experience. Highly personalized meeting follow-ups done in half the time with AI Customer success managers have a huge job: to bridge between sales and customer support, and ensure customers get the most value out of LogicMonitor’s platform. But their time is stretched thin as the company grows and CSMs must manage more accounts. As a result, automations have the potential for huge impact. That’s why LogicMonitor harnessed the power of generative AI to increase the productivity of its CSMs using Gong’s Ask Anything. CSMs save valuable time by using Gong to ask targeted questions, find information easily, automatically draft follow-up emails, and share call summaries with their peers. “Gong’s AI has simplified follow-ups so much that our CSMs saved at least 30 minutes on each meeting, cutting follow-up time by an average of 50%,” Jillian says. LogicMonitor’s teams expedite ramp-up with Gong’s AI querying feature. “Ask Anything helps our newer CSMs get more confident in their writing skills,” Jillian adds. “They start to develop their own voice and confidence in writing better professional emails, so that’s also a massive time savings.” In addition to speeding up follow-ups and improving CSMs writing skills with Ask Anything, LogicMonitor used Gong’s Gainsight integration to implement a pooled customer success model. All interactions are captured in Gong and then passed into Gainsight, LogicMonitor’s customer success tool of record. “As soon as there’s a call that takes place, it is automatically logged in Gainsight,” Jillian says. “So, we could trigger our automation based on that particular meeting that Gong creates automatically. That saves our CSMs a whole bunch of time.” Plus, there’s no question whether the call was logged. Churn becomes more predictable (and preventable) with data-backed insights Leaders and managers use Gong to surface the most successful customer calls, offering newer CSMs instructive examples of what has worked in the past, as well as what risk indicators might signal likelihood of churn. This allows for more accurate insights into account health and greater growth predictability. “Gong helps us quickly identify churn risk so we can mitigate before it’s too late. That way we can predict how close we will be to hitting our net retention target.” —Jillian Bierman, Director of Customer Success, LogicMonitor These new workflows also help Jillian ensure that CSMs are able to confidently speak to new products and motions, identify key account-health indicators, and ask the right follow-up questions. “Gong’s AI helps LogicMonitor and our CSMs work smarter, not harder, so we’re spending time in the right places versus just doing a whole bunch of administrative work. That’s absolutely the best way that Gong is helpful for my team.” —Jillian Bierman, Director of Customer Success, LogicMonitor Visibility and collaboration: the competitive advantages for success There’s no such thing as strong company growth without a well-informed sales motion. LogicMonitor is heavily focused on generating leads via customer success by uncovering opportunities and then handing them off to sales reps to close the business. With Gong’s Revenue Intelligence platform at their fingertips, CSMs can streamline workflows when working cross-functionally, providing critical information to the sales team quickly and accurately. “Our teams work very closely together. Sales is really focused on growth, and we’re a little bit more focused on retention — but we need both of those to hit net retention. So, that cross-collaboration in Gong is very helpful for our CSMs to understand what motion sales is taking or vice versa.” —Jillian Bierman, Director of Customer Success, LogicMonitor As LogicMonitor continues to grow, naturally so does the volume of people working with every customer across sales, CS, professional services, and more. The CSM can’t staff every sales or professional services call, but can rely on the visibility and automated insights Gong provides to see what happened in missed interactions to guide the next best steps for the account. With greater visibility across customer calls and account health, CSMs get a clearer picture of everything that’s going on at a granular level on each customer account, making collaboration more streamlined and effective. “Everybody who touches a given account can see what was talked about on a call,” Jillian says. “And it takes two seconds for the CSM, as opposed to 10 minutes that it would have taken to type up all their notes and put them into all their other tools.” Revenue transformation becomes a reality With Gong, Jillian has been able to grow her book of business by around 100 accounts while keeping the same number of CSMs. She adds, “Gong’s AI-powered platform and integrations supported a strategic initiative at LogicMonitor that led to at least a 20% increase in CSM capacity, in just the first 3 months since launch.” The reduction in time-consuming administrative tasks has given her confidence in her team’s ability to take on even more accounts without getting overwhelmed or decreasing the value they provide to their customers — a key component in LogicMonitor’s ability to maintain the growth and success they’ve seen so far. 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 Fast-growing Rootly sees 67% increase in rep productivity thanks to early investment in Gong Small Business Deal Execution North America Software Locking in predictable revenue: Gong takes Piano’s forecast accuracy to 90% Enterprise Deal Execution Global Software How BlueGrace’s reps got an 88% lift in reply rates using Gong Engage Coaching Deal Execution North America Business Services

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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 Proposify cut its time spent on forecasting by 25% with help from Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software How Gong Forecast helps Crayon spend 66% less time in forecasting calls Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Media & Internet Plate IQ shrinks ramp-up time from a year to a few weeks Small Business Strategic Initiatives North America 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 Funnel Increased Messaging Adoption by 76% Across Global Teams with Gong Small Business Strategic Initiatives Asia-Pacific Europe/Middle East/Africa Business Services How Gong enables sales leaders at GoTo to coach at scale Enterprise Coaching North America Software How SpotOn increased win rates by 16% through productivity gains Sales AI Sales Engagement Enterprise Coaching Engage North America Software

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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 The future of Fintech: Nasdaq uses Gong to make bullish bets Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Global Financial Services Round the World in Many Ways: How Mimecast Secured a Successful Global Messaging Rollout with Data Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Global Business Services How Iron Mountain shortened new-hire ramp times by 3 months using Gong Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Business Services

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Upwork’s RevOps team rockets to 95% sales forecast accuracy using Gong

Hannah Hapin — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 14:30:00 +0000

Upwork’s RevOps team rockets to 95% sales forecast accuracy using Gong Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Small Business North America Software 95% Sales Forecasting accuracy The challenge Before Gong, Upwork recognized the potential for enhancing the accuracy of its internal sales forecasts, especially in an unpredictable market. They also needed better (and earlier) visibility into whether their new GTM initiatives worked at an enterprise level. The outcome Upwork’s sales teams now forecast with 95% accuracy with highly reliable deal execution. Its RevOps team uses Gong to power well-informed decision making from day one for every GTM initiative. headquarters San Francisco, California founded 2015 company size 100,000+ industry Technology, Information and Internet Upwork is the world’s leading work marketplace, connecting businesses with independent talent from around the globe. Their talent community earned more than $3.8 billion on Upwork in 2022 across more than 10,000 skills, with over 800k clients turning to Upwork to innovate their workforce, accelerate the velocity of their work, and achieve their growth objectives. Their sales team navigated massive growth and scaled successfully using Gong data. Today, they rely on Gong Forecast — the perfect pairing of data and AI — to achieve incredible sales forecast accuracy while they continue to scale. The company began using Gong in 2017 and it was well-received from day one. Gong is now the RevOps team’s go-to for forecasting its sales accurately. Drew Korab, Director of Revenue Operations at Upwork, says his main challenge was being able to provide an accurate forecast to the business while scaling and implementing GTM initiatives that focus on enterprise sales. “Using Gong Forecast, we were able to call accurate sales numbers, even in the middle of major organizational change and an uncertain economy. Our old forecast process and data just didn’t cut it anymore. Gong Forecast gave us the new data, process, and insights we needed to project how our new business line would perform,” says Korab. “We’ve used Forecast for three solid quarters and our accuracy has only grown, to the point that we’re now at 95%. That’s invaluable for a company that’s moving into new sales territory in an uncertain economy.” Upwork runs a predictable revenue org, even while scaling The RevOps team uses Gong’s real-time insights to assess its pipeline health and uncover risks that would otherwise lead to a missed number. For a publicly traded company, that type of predictability and accuracy are critical. Before Gong, Upwork recognized there was an opportunity to provide a more accurate quarterly sales forecast. A new upmarket sales motion and a growing team meant that forecasting based on historical data didn’t work any more. Last year’s data — even last quarter’s data — was no longer a good baseline for comparison, and the data coming via the CRM just didn’t provide an accurate picture of the pipeline.The shifting economy magnified these challenges and made everything harder. The result was an unpredictable forecast that made double-digit swings in accuracy from quarter to quarter.Upwork needed real-time data for every deal in their pipeline so the sales team could forecast consistently and reliably. With the help of Gong Forecast, Korab got everyone working in one application where they had access to deal health data and AI that highlighted risks and told them where they were going off track. Here’s how Upwork’s GTM team now uses Gong to run their weekly forecasting process: Daily: Reps and managers use the Deal Board for pipeline inspection, and to update their opportunity progress and forecast categories (all syncing back to CRM). Gong’s deal warnings proactively alert the team to red flags and risk in their pipeline, pressure testing the quality of their commit. Wednesday: Gong automatically reminds sales managers to submit their forecast, and gives them a simple submission panel to update their forecast. Thursday: Directors, managers, and Ops review the current month and 90-day forecast in Gong. Using Trends and Gong Projection, the team quickly checks if they’re on track. Changes help the team understand which deals moved each week and why. And Deal Boards allow the senior managers and Ops to verify the quality of every deal in the forecast, with AI highlighting risk, helping validate the integrity of the team forecast. Friday: The team supplements the bottom-up forecast with top-down pacing and WoW analysis, reviewed by senior management. “With Gong,” Korab said, “we see every step of the sales process.” This advanced visibility means the GTM team can make better business decisions about which opportunities to prioritize and whether or not to include certain deals in their forecast. Integrated data immediately tells the team if their approach is effective, so they’re never waiting on results. Korab says, “Working with Gong lets us run a predictable revenue organization, reduce the number of tools in our tech stack, and save tons of time on forecasting.” Sales forecasts take 50% less time, with 100% of reps reporting According to Gong’s Reality of Forecasting Report 2022, only 22% of sales professionals say their forecasting process is efficient. That’s a problem for companies that are scaling. It prevents them from making quick business decisions about resource allocations, strategic directions, etc. Before using Gong Forecast, Upwork’s forecasting process was archaic and time-consuming. It involved Google spreadsheets, Salesforce reports, and “a ton of rep sentiment,” and ate up a minimum of six hours per week across five meetings involving multiple people. Managers were constantly wasting hours chasing reps over data entry. Forecast halved that time. “It got us into a routine. Now we focus on achieving our forecast instead of agonizing over whether we included the right numbers.” Gong reminds reps to fill in their forecast, which may seem trivial, but it creates a clockwork routine that everyone understands. Korab says that, “Today, 100% of reps submit their forecast on time. It used to be that 75% was a good week. Now the platform does the chasing for us,” says Korab. That’s part of how Upwork increased their sales forecasting accuracy to 95%. The team can call numbers confidently and accurately because they’re based on integrated and accurate data. “We give every C-suite member access to Gong because we trust the numbers,” says Korab. Mike Schaffer, the VP of Revenue Operations at Upwork says, “Instead of attending endless meetings, I’ve delegated inspections to my team. It’s one less thing I have to worry about. I trust the numbers I get from them.” Gong provides priceless accuracy in any economy Gong Forecast has changed how the RevOps team feels about the numbers they put forward. “I jump into the Trends tab every day,” says Korab. “ It helps me make reliable business decisions in real time, on a daily basis. I assess my sales forecast accuracy against 90-day historical wins, which I’ve found to be reliable in this economic environment. In Gong, I see those numbers at a glance.” Not only are the company’s sales forecasts 95% accurate while they scale, the RevOps team has the real-time feedback it needs about GTM initiatives. They can take their initiatives forward with confidence, knowing they have the means to ensure each initiative’s success. As Schaffer put it, “I can’t tell you how these economically uncertain times will turn out, but I know that we’ll be in a better position to face them because of the partnership we’ve built 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 How Addepar onboards new hires 60% faster with Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software Virgin Pulse used Gong to achieve a 4x jump in its top-of-funnel conversions (in this economy!) Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives Global Software How monday.com used Gong to align revenue teams around customers Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Global Software

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How Greenhouse reaped a 281% surge in new product ARR using Gong’s AI

Hannah Hapin — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 21:08:23 +0000

How Greenhouse reaped a 281% surge in new product ARR using Gong’s AI Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Small Business North America Software 281% increase in new product ARR The challenge Greenhouse needed a way to track and reinforce training for their products and increase org-wide visibility into customer interactions and deals in progress. The outcome Gong harnesses Greenhouse’s customer interactions and provides the insights they need to accelerate rep productivity and revenue growth. That includes a 281% increase in new product ARR, a 456% boost in attachment rate, and more. Headquarters New York, New York founded 2012 company size 800+ industry Software Development Written by Jessica Clay, Sr Program Manager of Revenue Enablement @ Greenhouse One of my favorite things to do is spend time transforming my yard with gardening. Gardening is challenging, rewarding, and requires a lot of planning. You have to amend the soil, place plants in the right place, water and fertilize as required, pull weeds, and then you still have to patiently wait for everything to grow and blossom. A garden is always a work in progress, and making changes to optimize the results is half the fun. Sales enablement is a lot like gardening. I get to help Sales Reps blossom! I dig deep to find tools that will help individuals grow and reach their full potential, and I strive to make teams more productive, aligned, and strategic in their work. And I get to do it for a company called Greenhouse, which is cool, considering my hobby. Greenhouse is the hiring operating system for people-first companies. Our hiring software streamlines the recruitment process for employers and job seekers, from sourcing all the way through onboarding. We do much more than track applications. Our platform helps companies live their values by embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) within their hiring practices and providing guidance as well as software that helps folks mitigate unconscious bias. I started as a sales rep and worked as an account executive before switching to sales enablement when it was a relatively young field. Before joining Greenhouse, I spent 18 months at a learning technology company. It was there that I first encountered Gong, but it wasn’t until I leveraged the platform at Greenhouse that I saw how much we could accomplish with it. Gong harnesses our customer interactions and provides the insights we use to accelerate rep productivity and revenue growth. That includes a 281% increase in new product ARR, a 456% boost in attachment rate, and more. I’m pleased to share the story of how we achieved such outstanding results, as we expanded our use of Gong. Helping a remote sales team blossom with AI-backed insights Greenhouse is a fully remote, global business. Our growing, global account management (AM) team comprises some of the most inspiring, motivated, and target-driven individuals and leaders I’ve ever worked with. This team of professionals works alongside our customer success (CS) colleagues to strengthen client relations and grow the partnership with our users by upselling products and services. Even with the best sales team, there are always hurdles to overcome. One of my first projects as an Enablement Manager at Greenhouse was to help reinforce the training for a new product that had just been launched. Despite an appetite from our customers for this new solution, we simply weren’t seeing the upsell numbers we had projected. After a series of discovery discussions with the account management leadership team, we identified three key areas that needed attention: discovery, objection handling, and next steps. We all agreed on a need to improve our AMs’ performance in these areas, and wanted to find a way to address the challenges in line with Greenhouse’s work culture. Gong immediately came to mind. The platform captures customer interactions, then leverages its proprietary AI model (built exclusively for sales teams) to analyze them. It identifies key trends inside those customer interactions and reveals what works and what doesn’t as our reps conduct discovery, handle objections, and set next steps. We were already using Gong when I joined the company, but in a limited capacity. Upskilling our AMs allowed us to break new ground with the platform, as we sought ways to align around engaging content that worked. A program launch enhanced by an in-person event The NFL season was just around the corner, so we decided to use a football theme when we launched our bi-weekly “Game Film” series. We created it to build alignment around messaging and improve rep productivity across the board. Inspired by the way sports teams analyze game footage to improve player performance and execute new plays, our program uses actual customer interactions captured and analyzed by Gong to help our teams learn from customer conversations. We worked with our Gong CSMs to build a learning plan that taught our AMs and their leaders how to effectively use the following Gong features: streams, call search and filters, points of interest, hashtags, the Call Library, and the Gong app for Zoom meetings. We then developed a Game Film playbook and launched it with an instructional “Training Camp” activity that preceded sessions dedicated to discovery, objection handling, and sales next steps. To complement the training sessions and rollout of the Game Film series, we created a Slack channel specifically for Game Film questions and wins. The only way to make this series successful was to boost our Gong adoption. We have a culture of feedback without judgment, and we wanted to build on that by developing our confidence and trust in each other — and in a platform that was new to many people. Fortunately, we had already scheduled an in-person event in Denver shortly after the Game Film rollout. It was my first time meeting the team in person and an opportunity to address employee concerns. Using feedback from the remote Training Camp session, we created an in-person game using 24 sticky notes on a whiteboard. Every AM chose a note at random and addressed a question about Gong and our new product. We incorporated role-playing, knowledge checks, and questions around discovery, the theme of our first Game Film. This informal and fun in-person exercise helped our AMs connect and become more comfortable with each other. At the end of the event, we walked away with a new slogan: Growth only happens when you get uncomfortable. Our results included a 281% boost in new product ARR We really pushed the football metaphor. We labeled our ongoing Game Film series, “Fantasy Gong Ball,” and after every training session, we selected an MVP for giving the most valuable feedback. It was a great way of recognizing people’s contributions to these team exercises. Our account managers love this format and have embraced Gong, with 84% rating their comfort level at four or five on a scale of five after the first session. After the second session, 100% of them expressed the same comfort with Gong. We launched our Game Film series at the beginning of Q4 and were able to compare our numbers to the previous quarter. In terms of Gong adoption, we saw a 147% increase in the number of reviewed customer interactions, a 360% rise in the average number of interactions with feedback, and a 30% uplift in interactions with comments. Our sales expansion figures also rose significantly in Q4. While many factors came into play, our Game Film series contributed significantly, resulting in a 281% increase in new product ARR, 312% more new product attached to renewals, and a 456% boost in attachment rate. Our AMs gained the confidence to effectively sell and upsell our new product. We couldn’t have done it without Gong. Training rooted in self-sufficiency Using Gong gives us visibility into everyone’s customer interactions, and we use its insights to help our reps tweak their talk tracks and reposition parts of their sales pitches. By adding personalized coaching opportunities to our bi-weekly Game Film series, we created even more possibilities for individual development and collective improvement. Some of Gong’s simplest features have had the most impact. One of my favorites is Call Snippets, a feature that lets us highlight key moments in a conversation. When our CSMS speak with a customer and hear something that suggests an upsell opportunity, they can highlight the interaction in Gong and comment to their Account Management partner(s). After launching our Game Films project, we transitioned ownership to a committee comprising members of the account management team. Now, the Game Film meetings are completely self-managed. The new team even devised a way to run the sessions, inspired by NCAA March Madness brackets and the friendly competition of sports betting pools. That’s the power of Gong. Once people learn the basics, they discover new ways to leverage the platform to sell and execute better. Gong is bearing fruit for Greenhouse We recently rolled out Gong Deal Boards to our CSMs and AMs. This powerful feature integrates seamlessly with our Gainsight customer success platform and Salesforce. We can pull any metric from Gainsight and Salesforce, feed it into Gong, and our CSMs can see the health of client accounts, send leads to AMs, and point out upsell opportunities. Having deep visibility into customer interactions and deals in progress allows us to make better and more strategic decisions. We have a saying at Greenhouse: “What got you here won’t get you there.” Gong certainly proved that point. We’re headed somewhere new, and Gong is the platform to take us there! Once we embraced and maximized our use of Gong, we began to see results. Gong has now clearly taken root. 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 How Gong enables sales leaders at GoTo to coach at scale Enterprise Coaching North America Software There and Back Again: Why Influitive Returned to Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software

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A Clearer Shot: How I Used Customer Insights to Make Better Decisions at Indeed

Hannah Hapin — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 20:29:51 +0000

A Clearer Shot: How I Used Customer Insights to Make Better Decisions at Indeed Coaching Strategic Initiatives Enterprise Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Media & Internet The challenge Before Gong, Indeed depended on anecdotal evidence from interviews with individual sales reps to inform their decisions which was not always accurate and took some additional time and resources. The outcome With Gong, Indeed was now able to gather data from multiple interactions, which saved the team time and resources. They were now able to quickly test their messaging and refine their training and rollout processes. Headquarters Austin, Texas founded 2004 customer size 17,000+ industry Technology, Information and Internet Written by Nate Davison, Sales & CS Training and Enablement Manager @ Indeed Perspective matters. In business as in life, it’s easy to see things the way you want to see them. It’s much harder to go into a situation thinking, “How can I approach things differently this time?” Yet, your ability to shift your perspective can directly influence your ability to make good decisions. Take photography, for example. Photography is a great way to literally see something through a different lens. Getting a drone as a gift allowed me to get into aerial photography, which is an ideal way to take something I see every day and turn it on its head. It enabled me to choose new points of view for my photographs and take more interesting pictures. When I take an aerial photo of a beach, for example, I notice striking lines and patterns that I don’t see when I stand on that same beach, even if I’m there every day. I do my best to apply that same philosophy at work. I’ve been at Indeed for nine years and was the first external hire on their learning and development (L&D) team. I know it’s a cliché within the L&D space, but I love helping, mentoring, and coaching people. It means everything to me to see that lightbulb moment when a person understands something from a new perspective for the first time. I fell into L&D by accident, but when I came to Indeed, I bought into the company’s mission, leadership, and global impact. It’s been amazing to see my team grow and shift, but sometimes it’s hard to determine the best way forward. That’s where it’s helpful to look at things from a different angle using technology. I had a chance to do this using Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform, when we launched a strategic initiative across our global teams. Measurement and tracking are a must for sales training In 2020, Indeed launched a new core sales and support methodology focused on understanding the customers’ needs so we could better address them. Since Indeed is a global company, we had to manage a worldwide rollout of the new messaging across various cultures, customs, and languages. We trained thousands of people around the world using this new sales and support methodology, but we needed better data to know whether we were doing a good job. How else could we make good decisions about whether to tweak the current training or our future rollouts? We could see, for example, that some markets were doing well, but we couldn’t definitively say this success was down to our new approach — or if it was despite our recent training. Any evidence was anecdotal or on a small scale. We lacked reliable insight into our customer interactions. Every company needs to connect its efforts with its results so it can decide how to move forward. We had built a great company, but we didn’t have a way to analyze how our initiatives landed in the field or tech that could connect our efforts to our sales and customer lifecycle results. We couldn’t determine a path forward based on our past work. That was a clarifying realization for us.Several of our managers insisted we needed an intelligence platform to give us greater visibility into how our messaging landed, and dozens of us participated in the selection process. Opening Our Sales Training Process to New Possibilities One of the things we found appealing about Gong was its 120+ integrations with other platforms, like Salesforce. Many tools offer great integrations, but Gong has the best reputation among them. Indeed is an industry leader, and working with a startup comes with a lot of uncertainty. We wanted to align ourselves with a company that similarly leads in its category, and Gong is synonymous with revenue intelligence and customer interaction analytics. Its AI-backed analytics capabilities were a massive win for us. My VP has a great mind for decision-making and is always saying, “Show me the numbers.” Gong offered both native analytics and the ability to connect those analytics to other platforms, such as Tableau. When we chose Gong, we chose integrated data (and organizational alignment around that data). We were all going to be able to make decisions based on a consistent view of what happened in our messaging initiatives and subsequent customer interactions. It’s funny how one change can open a world of possibilities. We adopted Gong and immediately uncovered several wins related to our training. Before Gong, we used anecdotal evidence from interviews with individual sales reps to make decisions about whether we needed to create additional support. Using Gong allowed us to gather data from multiple interactions, which affirmed that our new methodology helped teams get our customers closer to their hire. No additional support was needed; our training worked. Take a “win or learn” approach to conversations: Either win using an existing process or learn something to make it better. We also learned that some of our most valuable people weren’t using the new messaging. That’s not to say they weren’t successful — in many cases, they were. But we now had an opportunity to ask what drove this misalignment with our new messaging. That helped us tweak and refine our training and rollout processes.I think of this as a “win or learn” approach to conversations: Either we win using our existing process or we learn something new and make it better. Gong has given us the insights we need into what works, who does it best, and how we might adapt our approach before, during, and after strategic messaging initiatives. A New Way to Measure and Refine Behavioral Change Early in the rollout process, we started using keyword trackers for words and phrases we expected people to say in each phase. This straightforward (and highly accurate) tracking was a big help in getting everyone used to the platform and the insights it delivers with ease. We quickly moved on to flex our Gong muscles and dig into numerous critical elements of our processes. Scorecards, for example, allow us to identify areas of strengths and weakness in calls. We set expectations early that leaders should listen to and score at least one call per rep every week against preset criteria. It’s really improved the effectiveness of their coaching. The Points of Interest panel gives reps everything they need to know at a glance. They no longer have to take as many notes during customer conversations, as they can just go to the Points of Interest panel to see action items, questions asked, and more. It means they can pay more attention to our customers during calls. The Conversations tab is a great jumping-off point to drill down into interactions. We started with some basic filters, but now we’re adding complexity to get even more granular about steering teams in the right direction. Deal Boards allow our leaders to pull up helpful searches, learning objectives that use “what’s in it for me?” statements, and recommendations based on Gong’s predictive capabilities. These boards are often the basis for their decision-making. As expected, the Salesforce integration has been incredibly useful for us, as has the ability to aggregate interactions with a particular customer in one place. Integrated data gives us a more accurate view of our initiatives as they happen, so we can make smart business decisions on the fly. We’ve also changed the structure of our follow-ups using the Deals tab. We can immediately see if there’s a customer who’s changed their spend and a rep who hasn’t called them. By connecting the dots across interactions, reps (and managers) can ensure that no deals fall through the cracks. Many people who weren’t part of the Gong selection process have become big fans of the platform. Our head of marketing mentions Gong in every forum, saying things like, “I realized there are some big opportunities to improve this product based on what I saw in Gong.” Enhanced visibility into customer interactions gives L&D teams insight into what works well, who does it best, and how the company can evolve its approach. I also see the potential to embed Gong in the entire training process as a way to measure behavioral change.. Before training occurs, we can use Gong to outline the necessary learning content and define our objectives. During training, we can use snippets of customer interactions to train our reps on handling those situations. After training, Gong can go well beyond basic measurements of success and provide us with clear assessments of the training’s adoption and how well it worked in terms of our sales and support objectives.It used to be that we could only speculate how our trainees reacted to training and guess what they might have learned. Now we can ask questions that are aligned with the Kirkpatrick Model: What behavioral changes are present or absent? Do those behavioral changes result in increased revenue, product adoption, and meaningful conversations with our clients? It’s an entirely new level of post-training assessment. Analytics That Helped Us Scale We have launched a dozen new versions of our products in the past 18 months, and thanks to Gong, we can now see how product mentions correlate with our launches and sales. You can’t do that with call recordings alone. I knew Indeed was doing incredible things, but when we started using Gong, I saw our efforts through a different lens: that of our customers. We’ve been using their perspective to improve our offerings and it’s clearly working. Our head of products often uses Gong to understand how we can more closely align Indeed’s values with our customers’ needs. We’re constantly using Gong to find specific customer feedback so that we can incorporate make a better experience, and these types of insights give us an opportunity to reframe and reshape our product as well as customer interactions and learn what works best. Today, technology like Gong offers us recommendations and analytics for every customer interaction, every single time, in a matter of seconds. I worked in sales as my first job out of college. I’m an enthusiastic person, and I was genuinely excited to talk to people. But it took me a while to realize that my enthusiasm came across all wrong. Customers interpreted my excitement as being overly “salesy” and were less inclined to trust me. I think about the lessons I learned then from having even a sliver of visibility into calls from audio recordings — a technology that seems so primitive now. Today, in addition to audio, Gong offers us recommendations and analytics based on every customer interaction, in a matter of seconds. Get a new perspective on something familiar I’m an L&D professional, but I’m also a husband and father. If raising kids teaches you anything, it’s to take the time to see things differently so you can chart a good path forward. I’m teaching my young daughter how to fly that drone I mentioned earlier (We named it Zephyr, after the Greek god of the west wind.), and she’s amazed at how different things look from above. She often says, “Daddy, I bet if we looked at this with Zephyr, it would look totally different.” And she’s right.Take the time to consider something familiar, learn from it, and make your decisions based on a new point of view. That new perspective and refreamed decision-making ability is what I get from aerial photography, and it’s what Indeed has found in 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 Hello, new reality: How WalkMe uses Gong to add visibility around their deals Small Business Deal Execution North America Software BlueCat Empowers Their Field Team to Understand Their Pipeline Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Business Services How monday.com used Gong to align revenue teams around customers Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Global Software

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How Andela’s enablement team shortened sales cycle times by 33% with Gong

Hannah Hapin — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 22:40:10 +0000

How Andela’s enablement team shortened sales cycle times by 33% with Gong Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Small Business North America Media & Internet The challenge Andela already had Gong, but there was an opportunity to further maximize its use. When Andela renewed Gong, the enablement team began to own the platform, which gave them even greater visibility into what they needed and how the team could achieve it. The outcome Through Gong, Andela was able to gain visibility into customer interactions which led to increased efficiency and improved decision-making. They also saw an improvement in rep knowledge, reduced time to ROI, and cut sales cycles by 33%! headquarters New York, New York founded 2014 company size 1,500+ industry IT Services and IT Consulting Written by Kieran Smith, Past Senior Manager of Revenue Enablement @ Andela I spent more than a decade as a sales leader. But the further up the ladder I went, the less fun I had, and the further I moved away from what I loved doing: coaching and developing people. I used to work as a professional football coach (soccer for the North Americans out there), and there are many parallels to coaching people on and off the field. I liked to develop people into their best selves, improve their skills, and even help them with career path mapping. When I transitioned off the pitch into sales, the most rewarding part was constantly revising and reworking sales processes and methodologies to get the best results from my sales reps. While I liked the strategy element of leadership roles, it took me away from people on the frontlines who needed coaching. Coming out of the depths of the pandemic, I made a conscious pivot from sales leadership into sales enablement, and joined the team at Andela.Andela is a global talent marketplace that connects leading organisations with highly skilled technologists in emerging markets. As a Senior Manager of Revenue Enablement, my focus was onboarding and coaching AEs — exactly the stuff I like to do. But first, I had to address several challenges around remotely onboarding a sales team with an ever-evolving sales process. Better visibility was the #1 key to empowering our sales enablement team Ramp times and our time to ROI had room for improvement. Between a newer sales team and shifting sales messaging, our reps struggled to hit the ground running and adapt to changes in the sales process. All of this led to slower sales cycles and knowledge gaps. To get our reps up to speed faster, I needed better visibility into their customer interactions. I needed to tap into Gong. I had bought and implemented Gong at another company, but left before reaping its benefits. Fortunately, Andela already had Gong, but there was an opportunity to further maximise its use. When Andela renewed Gong, I took ownership of the platform. The following month I was promoted to run the enablement team, which gave me even greater visibility into what we needed and how we could achieve it. Gong is much more than a conversation intelligence tool; it’s a Revenue Intelligence Platform. The platform’s value and efficiency come from how it helps leaders analyse customer interactions at scale. For someone in an enablement position who helps drive strategic initiatives, such as new messaging rollouts and price changes, with adoption and coaching, the data and the insights from those interactions are critical. Andela’s sales team had more than doubled during the pandemic, so our onboarding and communications needed to change if we were going to remain efficient. We could no longer rely on sharing anecdotal experiences to inform our strategy. Gong’s true differentiator is empowering teams to harness the voice of the customer by uncovering data and insights that shape how a company moves forward, and that’s what we needed most. Gong revealed and corrected gaps in rep training (with a 188% improvement rate!) In 2022, I listened to 2,238 customer interactions in Gong. The number isn’t as significant as the information that came from that data. I pride myself on understanding the full context of customer interactions: what’s being said and by whom, at what level, and for which segment. Gong gives me what I need to reach that level of understanding so I can plan the next best step. Andela previously had a “ride-along” culture, where managers would sit in on random calls with their sales reps and base their understanding of that rep’s performance on their call behaviour. But of course, people behave differently when their manager is there. The truth happens during interactions when the manager isn’t there. Gong enabled me to learn what happened when managers weren’t in the room. And it revealed a lot about the gaps in our training… One trend I noticed in listening to these calls was that reps passed a number of difficult questions to their manager. That meant reps were rising through the ranks with knowledge gaps.That said, we did some things well — our enterprise team was growing by ~4% week over week — but we also missed some of the basics, like setting agendas. When I asked the manager whether reps were setting agendas, they answered, “Yep.” But Gong revealed that agenda setting happened on only 17% of calls. Managers were shocked, but there was nothing to debate. We did a sprint for two weeks, where we ran through how to set an agenda and set expectations. After the training, agenda setting jumped from 17% to 49%, which is great for such a short time. It’s a 188% increase! Data-backed insights make it easier to separate assumptions from the truth. Sales enablement is a catchall term, but I view myself as an internal strategic advisor. In other words, I have influence without authority. Objective numbers make it easier to assert that influence because it’s hard to argue with what’s there in black and white.Gong provides the data-backed insights that separate assumptions from the truth. It improved our efficiency and our decision-making at the same time. Call Libraries improved rep knowledge, reduced their time to ROI, and cut sales cycles by 33% Once I had a solid understanding of our situation, we revamped our onboarding program to integrate Gong as early as possible. With each new group of hires, we introduced Gong earlier and earlier. One of the first touchpoints is a best-practice Call Library split by segment, role, call type, and element of the call. This makes it easier for new reps to find the exact information they need. Our SDR library, for example, is split into folders for booked meeting calls and prospecting calls. The prospecting folder has six subfolders for each piece of the conversation in the SDR playbook, with call snippets for each element. That might include call openers, insights, permission, insightful questions, objection handling, and closings. Not everybody needs to work on every part of the cold call. Someone might be really good at asking questions, but not so good at objection handling. Gong makes it really easy for our reps to listen to 15 examples of objection handling or 20 examples of how to close a meeting. Whatever they need, whenever they need it.We also implemented a certification for all roles. As part of the preparation for that process, reps need to do a Gong exercise in which they listen to previous certifications and offer feedback. With more exposure to best practices through the Call Libraries, the standards of certification went up, from a score of 3/5 to 4/5 (a 33% increase). And when those reps finished training, they ramped up a lot faster. We cut our ramp time for SDRs by 50%, which is notably good. We also reduced the time to ROI for AEs to 12 weeks, and shortened our sales cycle by 33%. Gong-focused incentive program upleveled managers’ and reps’ coaching skills My dedication to coaching was important, but also led me to a big mistake. I knew the value in developing people, and assumed other leaders did too. I also assumed they knew how to do it well, but I was wrong. Not many people actually get management training. Our sales leadership team was growing quickly to keep pace with the growth of our reps, so it made sense to boost Gong adoption with more tenured team members through the managers. We created a leadership development program focused on sales coaching, and set minimum expectations for managers to review one customer interaction for each rep in Gong and provide a Scorecard and feedback. After that, we encouraged reps to use Gong to listen to their own interactions with customers, as well as those of our top reps. At the sales team’s Monday standup meeting, we introduced a Gong leaderboard that showed the previous week’s stats for SDRs, AEs, and client partners. We started noticing that the people who listened to the most calls were high on the leaderboard, so we augmented the leaderboard with our “Gong Star of the Month” program. Managers would nominate a call each month, and I would choose a winner for each role, with the winners receiving $250 plus some Gong swag. It was a chance for us to celebrate excellent performance and demonstrate our commitment to this platform. Nothing sends salespeople into a flurry more than hearing, “We’re going to do some call coaching,” because it usually means criticism. And I know what it’s like — your manager is critical about one bad decision and you never hear about anything else. Instead, we reverse-engineered a feedback loop by creating a self-reflective Scorecard. We asked reps to tell us two or three things they thought they did well, name where they felt they could improve, and provide suggestions for strategies they might try the next time. Reps submitted their Scorecard and the specific customer interaction for their manager to review in Gong. Then a conversation began between the rep and their manager. We taught our managers how to coach more effectively using Gong as a coaching solution, which led to improvements for the team.I worked with one woman who started her journey near the bottom of the leaderboard. Using this self-reflective feedback, she was soon second from the top. She just needed that interactive feedback process, and Gong helped us deliver it. Clear data made it easy to track the success of training programs for new business lines The world changed while I was at Andela. As everyone went remote, Andela was in high demand, and we had to change our sales approach. We needed to talk about our story, boost engagement, and discover which points now resonated with prospects. We changed our slide deck four times, but we always looked to Gong data to refine our strategy.Andela’s core business involved front-end and back-end engineers. During the pandemic, we strategically started moving into what we called practice areas, for people with more specialised skills. As we introduced these practice areas, we used Gong Trackers to highlight key words. For example, every mention of “data” or “cloud practice” would alert the practice leader to listen to that particular interaction. Trackers were a huge part of Andela’s growth strategy. Using Gong meant we could hone in on growth areas, identify practice gaps, and easily alert practice leads so they could jump in straight away. We also added practice area calls to our Call Library, so sales reps could listen to Salesforce calls before talking to a CRM director, for example. Gong data offers specificity, allowing leaders to be more confident and conscious about how they help individuals and the team as a whole. Over 18 months, I noticed an improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of changes we made to our sales approach. Gong allowed us to create more bespoke, targeted training. Rather than ask a manager what the team needed to work on, we could look at objective stats in Gong to see what needed work. We could develop group training if the entire team scored low on a pain point, or create more targeted training in a particular area if it was warranted. After training, we monitored those areas to determine whether there were improvements. Gong data gives us that specificity, allowing us to be more confident and conscious about how we help individuals and the team. The best coaches (and engineers) use a data-driven approach Whether you’re a world-class football coach or sales leader, you should use data to analyse your performance against your chosen methodology. That analysis informs how you train for the rest of the week, month, and year. Whether you’re working with an athlete who can’t break out of 1:1 coverage or a salesperson who always avoids a pointed question, you have to go beyond “my opinion versus your opinion” and look at the data to see what really happened. Only then can you influence strategy and direction for your team. Embracing insights from customer interactions will enhance every aspect of your sales cycle. Sales is one of the most objective industries there is, because your revenue number is your revenue number. That makes sales ripe for a data-driven approach. The best thing you can do is embrace the data-driven insights Gong generates from your customer interactions. They can enhance every aspect of your sales cycle. 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 Visibility, Insights, and Outcomes: The Secret Sauce to Sustainable Growth at Kustomer Small Business Coaching Deal Execution North America Software Shortening the time to success for new sales reps Small Business Coaching North America Media & Internet Gong’s Real Time Customer Feedback Drives Quotient’s Results Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives North America Business Services

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Round the World in Many Ways: How Mimecast Secured a Successful Global Messaging Rollout with Data

Hannah Hapin — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 23:59:03 +0000

Round the World in Many Ways: How Mimecast Secured a Successful Global Messaging Rollout with Data Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Enterprise Global Business Services The challenge Mimecast released new messaging around their core pillars and needed a way to stay consistent across their global locations and ensure their reps across the enterprise used the new branding in all customer-facing content. The outcome With Gong, Mimecast was able to ensure they told a consistent Mimecast story in each of their global regions. That has made for a better messaging strategy and has helped the team collaborate more effectively. headquarters Broadgate, London founded 2003 company size +2,200 industry Computer and Network Security Written by Ian Gwynne, Technology Enablement Architect @ Mimecast Every region of the globe has a unique flavor and distinct feel. For a traveler, the fun is in seeing and experiencing what makes each region special. For a global, enterprise company, working in different regions has the benefit of bringing together multiple perspectives. It also requires leaders to think differently. You can’t do business quite the same way in every location, and you must work especially hard to ensure that everyone remains aligned with your company goals. Sometimes, using consistent messaging in various locations doesn’t work as well as you’d hope. That’s why at Mimecast, we incorporated cultural strengths into our latest strategic initiative: a launch of a new branding and messaging, all while boosting enablement and discovering what good looks like for sales reps. Mimecast is an enterprise-level cyber security company focused on stopping bad things from happening to good organizations by enabling them to work protected. From our offices across the globe, in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia-Pacific, we work with technical sales cycles in all segments of SMB, commercial, and enterprise. We deal with customers in a wide range of industries, from mom-and-pop retail shops to large banks and tech companies. Sales enablement at Mimecast consists of a small but mighty team spread across the globe, who use technology as a force multiplier. As a Technology Enablement Architect at Mimecast, my role is to empower our go-to-market sellers to use and get the most out of our fully integrated tech stack — and it’s a pretty beefy tech stack. What I really love about my job is working one-on-one with reps to understand how tech like the Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform can improve their daily workflow. In 2021, the enablement team added Gong to our tech stack, and it proved to be a critical part of our branding, messaging, and enablement strategy. Turn to data to ensure consistency in large, global, strategic initiatives In August of 2022, the company released new messaging around our core pillars of protecting communications, people, and data. We ensure that businesses feel confident that their communications are secure, their data is safe and integrated, and that their people are well-trained in cyber security awareness. Everyone should feel confident in doing their job with a workflow that feels natural to them without having to worry about cybersecurity. This was the meaning behind our new messaging, “work protected.” It was extremely important that we were consistent in our messaging across our global locations, and that reps across the enterprise used the new branding in all customer-facing content. Gong was a big part of the project, and helped ensure that we told a consistent Mimecast story in each of our global regions. We first rolled out Gong in North America, and given our success using the platform, expanded its use from there. With Gong’s trackers and filters, we could easily surface and highlight examples of when the new messaging was used effectively — identifying for our teams what good looks like. We were also able to flag when old messaging or content was used, and coach or correct accordingly. Messaging can’t be cookie-cutter for all regions and roles in a global, enterprise-level company. You must combine tech with cultural expertise for maximum effectiveness. Gong also helped us realize that messaging can’t be cookie-cutter for all regions and roles. The message may be the same, but the delivery can be different in each region. Reps in some regions are direct and all business, while reps in other regions abide by a more conversational and casual cultural norm. Gong showed us we could allow for these cultural differences without losing our core message or its effectiveness. Make well-informed pivots… even in the midst of a messaging rollout Gong’s visibility into customer and rep interactions played an important part in training during this rollout. We used to engage in scenario-based training and role playing, but the scenarios weren’t always realistic. Who a person is in training is not necessarily how they pitch on a call. You don’t know the truth until a rep is engaged in a direct conversation with a customer and you have insight into that conversation. For our new approach to messaging training, reps submit a call or a snippet (a portion of a call easily shared on the Gong platform) where they spoke to a customer using the new messaging. This way, we not only adapt our training to the real-life voice of the customer, but we also tweaked our enablement style to the natural pitch and positioning of our reps in different regions. That was a significant change for Mimecast. Another big benefit we saw using Gong during the messaging rollout was the ability to test our hypotheses on the fly. We designed marketing material based on our new messaging that included pitch decks, which have a slide meant to help with discovery by walking the prospect through our solution portfolio. It was designed to create a two-way conversation and encourage asking the customer discovery questions to learn more about their current state. But we discovered some reps pulled up that slide and “opened up the back of the truck,” as my team calls it. They essentially said, “Look at all our fancy products and services.” Our reps were telling prospects “all about us,” when the slide was intended to open up a conversation about customers’ needs. Alongside this discovery, Gong’s AI insights surfaced a dip in some of our pipeline and deals. We uncovered this hard truth about the deck using Gong’s slide filter, which allows you to search for slide text used in a call. Gong provides search filters like no other product on the market. In addition to the slide text, I set the duration for the slide’s use on the call to 5 to 30+ minutes, believing that a rep using that slide for over five minutes would likely indicate “speaking at” the customer. In the interaction search I set the longest monologue to 3 to 20+ minutes to identify long rants, and the talk ratio to 30% to 100% to target one-sided conversations. This search gave me a strong sample size I could use to highlight to sales leaders that we needed to tweak our enablement and coaching on this slide to better support our reps. With Gong our enablement team also identified trends in successful seller behaviors which the team could relay across to the field. An insight we found revealed that high-performing sellers were speaking less during customer calls, and they were allowing the customer to expand more on their pain points and needs. We began to interview sellers while also setting up call alerts to listen to and learn more about their success to understand and translate the effective actions of the sellers into behaviors for enablement to focus on. These calls and interviews revealed that high-performing sellers used custom talk-tracks that depended on robust questioning and active listening. Simply put, high-performing sellers were asking more questions of the customer, which helped lead the customer to share more and provide self-discovery. Gong allowed us to identify this and helped us focus on how to best equip sellers to actively listen and ask more purposeful discovery questions to guide the customer to share more information on a call. From here we began to use other filters to identify interactions that align with Gong’s best practices, to give reps a Call Library to review and learn from. This has helped managers share calls to support coaching initiatives while also simplifying the feedback process. Gong allows us to be more effective because we can test a hypothesis against the data, learn from it, and switch our approach. In another example, we looked at how reps applied the new messaging by region, and found that certain regions with less enablement support weren’t as aligned with the rollout as we wanted. This discovery led us to identify that we needed closer alignment with regional enablement, which helped us take a more structured approach to enablement across the globe. Today, our go-to-market messaging is much more closely aligned globally. Our rollout across nine countries was a success. So much so, in fact, that we received a Golden Gong award to recognize our work. Use insights into customer interactions to build efficiency, collaboration, and support across the company Before adopting Gong, Mimecast didn’t have a great process for learning about the voice of the customer. Part of our initial push towards the Gong platform was to give the company better insight into customer interactions. We wanted to know what works in the field — what’s real and what’s not — without reps dealing with the psychological burden of managers sitting in on their calls. Gong’s AI digests data from our customer interactions and presents it in dashboards (“Deal Board,” “Initiatives” board, etc.) in a way that’s easy to understand and act on. In one month Gong gave us the amount of data that other solutions gave us in six. That data analysis is a big part of how Gong has helped the enablement team become more efficient, especially when it comes to working across time zones. Before Gong, I would very often be online late at night or early in the morning, and I’m not a morning person. You can’t expect everyone to be 100% during their off hours — I know I’m not at my peak alertness then. It’s also unfair to the other person, who doesn’t receive the same attention they would if working with someone in their own time zone. With that being said, as we rolled out our new messaging, we needed a good understanding of what was happening across different roles and regions. Setting up alerts based on a person’s role or time zone allowed us to keep track of deviations from our messaging, then follow up to get a better understanding of why someone might have tweaked the messaging. This helped us learn regionally what worked and what didn’t. Data that helps people work together on the front lines also moves up the chain of command to provide more accurate forecasts. We’ve also seen how Gong provides real-time visibility into risk through Gong Deal Boards and call alerts. The warning column in the Deal Boards shows key deal elements that haven’t been discussed, such as pricing, or an absence of senior executives from involvement in the deal. Gong also allows our managers to set up call alerts based on the warning triggers that concern them. In the past, managers might ask about a deal in their one-on-one with a rep, but that could be a week after the initial interaction. These call alerts enable stronger collaboration, because it allows us to support reps and address risks before it’s too late. Meanwhile, other teams can set up trigger alerts for keywords. When the words “new feature” are mentioned, for example, Gong alerts our product marketing team with the direct feedback from the customer. The data that helps people work together on the front lines also moves up the chain of command to help us provide more accurate forecasts. We couldn’t do it without Gong’s AI-backed analysis. Leverage tech to spot and respond to market trends faster and more successfully We still consider ourselves in the early phase of our Gong implementation, but what Gong has allowed us to do is identify and adapt to new trends. Like a lot of enterprise-sized, global companies, we had a drop in our new business pipeline in the early days of the pandemic. With Gong, we could analyze what had changed in our messaging and, more importantly, dive into the messaging of reps who were still having successes. We share calls within Gong, so when someone has a successful call, they share it leadership and the enablement team to review. In that way, Gong helps us learn from our frontlines more effectively, which leads to greater pipeline success. Learning more efficiently from our frontline workers leads to greater pipeline success. When certain products are mentioned less frequently, we can form a hypothesis as to why, and offer awareness or reinforcement training. We can also identify trends at the global level to ensure adequate support and enablement. Companies can learn a lot from incorporating different points of view. With Gong, we now have the ability to test our hypotheses by bringing in multiple perspectives, not just regionally, but globally, across multiple teams. That has made for a better messaging strategy, and has helped us collaborate more effectively. 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 Fast-growing Rootly sees 67% increase in rep productivity thanks to early investment in Gong Small Business Deal Execution North America Software Round the World in Many Ways: How Mimecast Secured a Successful Global Messaging Rollout with Data Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Global Business Services

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How Funnel Increased Messaging Adoption by 76% Across Global Teams with Gong

Hannah Hapin — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 18:42:40 +0000

How Funnel Increased Messaging Adoption by 76% Across Global Teams with Gong Strategic Initiatives Small Business Asia-Pacific Europe/Middle East/Africa Business Services 76% increase in new messaging adoption The SUMMARY Funnel, the world’s leading Marketing Data Hub, wanted to revamp how it ran its strategic initiatives — specifically sales process adoption and messaging initiatives — across its sales organization. They used Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform to prioritize better decision-making and pivots during rollouts and improve their alignment and new message adoption across globally distributed teams. HEADQUARTERS Stockholm, Stockholm County FOUNDED 2014 EMPLoyees 300+ industry Advertising Services A 76% boost is a reason to cheer, especially if you’re Funnel’s Sales Enablement team. That’s the astounding jump they experienced in sales calls that mention Funnel’s new messaging, thanks to Gong. It’s the result of a strategic initiative designed to align their globally distributed teams around new messaging. Funnel is a Marketing Data Hub that connects multiple platforms and allows marketing teams to assess their performance. It’s truly a global organization, with headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden; offices in Boston and Dublin; and Australia. When Katie McCullagh, Global Sales Enablement Manager (Dublin), and Angela Baldacci, Global Sales Enablement Manager in the US were asked to run a strategic initiative promoting Funnel’s new messaging to globally distributed — and quickly growing — teams, they leaned into Gong. Funnel was at a critical juncture in its growth and faced some challenges in adopting and standardizing new messaging, all of which are typical of fast-growing and globally distributed teams during rollouts. These included working across multiple locations and time zones and in numerous languages and dialects. Based on past challenges, Katie and Angela’s top priorities were: Gamifying the uptake of strategic initiative rollouts: This would result from tracking the new messaging’s adoption, then pivoting based on adoption-related insights. Greater business efficiency: They would achieve this through global alignment around new messaging that worked. Gong’s Initiatives board and Smart Trackers made tracking adoption easy Gong’s Initiatives board and Smart Trackers made tracking adoption easy Gong had already streamlined and improved Funnel’s coaching, onboarding, and skills development for the sales team. Now, Katie and Angela were keen to test out the benefits of its Initiatives board for rollouts. This feature was built to track the adoption of strategic initiatives like this new messaging rollout, so decision-makers could steer the initiative in real time based on its adoption and results in the field. Gong’s Initiatives board made it easy for Katie and Angela to iterate and pivot quickly during the rollout based on their ability to filter adoption rates for any team, individual, or time zone. Gong’s Initiatives board kept them focused on adoption metrics and helped them bypass the issues that typically result in misalignment on global teams (location, language, etc.). Angela describes the Initiatives board as, “So powerful. Incredible from a data visualization perspective — a single click shows us how our initiative is performing. No exporting. No manual calculation.” They also set up Smart Trackers — Gong’s AI-powered way to pick up on themes or topics within calls, not just keywords — to track conversations that indicated adoption, no matter the language or dialect. “Going through the process of creating a Smart Tracker is really fun for the person creating it, and it’s amazing to see how Gong’s AI constantly learns to detect unforeseen challenges we’d otherwise miss,” says Angela. They had all the adoption information they needed to pivot quickly, in real-time, and in one place. “Gong gamification” helped achieve a 76% boost in new messaging use Katie and Angela added some healthy competition to their strategic initiative. They hoped a little gamification would inspire widespread message adoption and align global team members around consistent use of the new messaging. “Gong helped us drive a strategic initiative and align global teams around new messaging in a way that was engaging and insightful,” said Angela. With a 76% increase in the number of calls using the new messaging in just one month, their plan paid off. Here is how they gamified their strategic initiative using Gong’s Smart Trackers and Scorecards: Goal: They aimed to incentivize new message adoption and align globally distributed teams around a strategic initiative. Process: They created a scoring system using Gong’s Smart Trackers, whereby salespeople earned points by using the company’s new messaging on calls, and managers earned points by assessing those calls using Gong’s Scorecards to rate customized criteria and highlight where calls needed improvement. Results: Within one month, 76% more of the 1,000+ customer interactions across the revenue org mentioned the new messaging. Bonus: New messaging was top of mind for every revenue team member in the org. This approach helped solidify the use of Gong by both managers and reps during new strategic initiatives. The winning team’s manager scored more than 80 calls! Funnel forever reshapes its strategic initiatives “With Gong, there’s infinite flexibility and possibility when we roll out critical business initiatives.” Angela finds that every time the Global Sales Enablement team hits a potential roadblock, there’s always a way to use Gong to solve the issue. She found it wasn’t as easy to remain flexible with other software. “Gong has been an incredible platform … Even the different language versioning has really helped in our tracking.” In short, says Angela, “I love Gong and will advocate for the platform every day.” Kaite agrees. “Even if we weren’t global, Gong has been so pivotal to the success of a sales org to see what team members do, how they excel, and how they learn from each other.” Today, the Global Sales Enablement team relies on Gong during the planning and execution of its strategic initiatives, wherever they take place around the world. 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 Round the World in Many Ways: How Mimecast Secured a Successful Global Messaging Rollout with Data Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Global Business Services There and Back Again: Why Influitive Returned to Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software Shortening the time to success for new sales reps Small Business Coaching North America Media & Internet

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