Business Services Archives - Gong

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

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

How Elsevier lands 45% larger deals using Gong across its NOAM sales team Coaching Deal Execution Enterprise Global Business Services 35% boost in deal velocity 45% growth in deal size The challenge Healthcare information powerhouse Elsevier faced challenges in optimizing efficiency in its sales team’s workflows. The company also needed a better way for its managers to access deal information that could help them support their reps — and close bigger deals. The outcome Using Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform, Elsevier’s sales team achieved incredible productivity gains in their workflows. This led to a 35% increase in deal velocity and a 45% growth in deal size when managers were involved in deals in Gong. headquarters Amsterdam, North Holland founded 1880 company size 10,000+ inDustry IT Services and IT Consulting No one understands deep market changes like a 145-year-old company. Just ask the people at Elsevier. Long a powerhouse in the publishing world, Elsevier now specializes in data tools that empower health researchers and clinicians to achieve better outcomes. Internally, Elsevier also uses solutions that help its employees — notably, its sales reps — achieve more. In fact, when Elsevier’s 120 North American sales reps and its managers started using the Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform to manage their deals, they became incredibly productive. Reps boosted their average deal velocity by 35% and increased the size of their deals by 45% when managers are involved. Tim McGee is Elsevier’s VP Global Sales Operations, where he equips his teams with the tools they need to do their jobs efficiently. “Gong has become an essential part of our go-to-market operation.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier Here’s how Tim and his team use revenue intelligence to get double-digit results. Productivity boosts Elsevier’s deal velocity by 35% “The impact Gong has had on our rep productivity is enormous,” says Tim. “We’re able to close deals 35% faster today because of it.” Gong has boosted Elsevier’s productivity and deal velocity simultaneously, through workflow efficiencies. The sales team Tim supports is more efficient now that their reps are using key insights identified by Gong’s Call Spotlight to shape how they tackle deals. They can easily clarify pain points, outcomes, and next steps, and create effective offers faster to keep deals moving. The managers on the sales team also use Gong to quickly understand key data about their reps’ deals, including risk factors that might jeopardize those deals. “Gong has enabled managers and reps to be closer to our deals, which ultimately results in their being more effective in closing those deals, driving win rates, and closing larger deals. Ultimately, they attain sharper conversion rates.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier Sales managers no longer have to ask for updates about deals — they’re empowered to go right into Gong’s Deal Board and immediately understand what’s happening. They can share key information with relevant people at Elsevier and remove the barrier of asking reps for deal updates. Pairing that with reading Gong AI-generated summaries instead of listening to dozens of phone calls means significant time savings. That time saved enables managers to do what they do best — coach reps to move the right deals forward, quickly. Plus, with Gong’s insights, managers know exactly who needs coaching, when, and why. It’s all added up to a 35% improvement in deal velocity. AI optimizes pipeline conversion and enables a 45% increase in deal size Tim says that Gong AI plays a major role in giving Elsevier faster and more accurate updates on deals. Reps are also closing larger deals thanks to better coaching from their managers, stemming from Gong AI. “When managers get involved in a customer engagement within Gong, we see a 45% increase in the deal size.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier (With results like that, it’s not surprising that Tim’s managers have a 95% engagement rate with the platform!) The feature managers will use the most is Ask Anything, where they can input any question — say, “Is this deal going to close?” — and immediately get a reliable response from Gong AI. Managers can use Ask Anything and Gong’s Deal Board to get insights into customer interactions, and “identify the yellow lights,” as Tim puts it. That is, they’re spotting risks that can affect any deal, whether it’s for a new buyer or a renewal. Managers use this information to guide deals back on track and focus reps’ efforts where they’ll be most effective. It’s made for a “cleaner and more active pipeline,” according to Tim. Workflow: Customer-centric innovation and alignment “The biggest impact Gong has had on our business is removing the subjectivity of the voice of the customer.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier That statement is explained by two enhancements across the team: The ability to shore up their incredibly important renewal base. Using the voice of the customer in other areas of the business beyond sales, including the product and go-to-market teams. Elsevier now uses the voice of the customer to build new products and enhance existing ones stemming from customer feedback shared across teams via Gong. “We have more than 200 global users outside the sales team. The inputs they get from Gong inform product decisions and help us build our commercial strategies and market to our customers more effectively.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier Access to the voice of the customer has also heightened organizational effectiveness around account handoffs. No one drops the ball when a customer moves from sales to customer success. It’s easy for everyone to get fully briefed on the history of a deal, account, or contact — and in a fraction of the time it used to take. Elsevier reimagines work using Gong AI “Gong’s AI is powerful, accurate, and frankly, a game changer.” —Tim McGee, VP Global Sales Operations, Elsevier Elsevier’s team has expanded their use of Gong from conversion rates and deal size to its entire ecosystem. “It’s fully integrated into the way that we work at Elsevier.” The company is getting the most out of Gong, and will continue to make improvements on top of its 35% boost in deal velocity and 45% increase in deal values. Gong is Elsevier’s key partner in bringing efficiency to the forefront of its global sales team’s workflows and ensuring the success of its go-to-market initiatives. The end result is greater success — and higher revenue — at Elsevier. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one Alignment across RevOps and reps brings Frontify a 30% increase in lead conversion Small Business Deal Execution Engage Forecast Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software How Gong got every Pigment Department on the same team Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa Software How monday.com used Gong to align revenue teams around customers Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Global Software

The post How Elsevier lands 45% larger deals using Gong across its NOAM sales team appeared first on Gong.

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

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

How BlueGrace’s reps got an 88% lift in reply rates using Gong Engage Coaching Deal Execution North America Business Services 88% Increase in reply rates 52% Increase in calls and email execution The challenge BlueGrace needed to boost its pipeline and conversion rates in a competitive market. When “spray-and-pray” outreach tactics didn’t work, they turned to Gong Engage — a full-cycle sales engagement solution — to fully transform their sales engagement workflows and improve coaching. The outcome BlueGrace sellers now use Engage to create higher-quality outreach that gets 88% more responses. Engage’s workflow efficiency gains and AI-backed, prioritized to-do lists help those same reps execute 52% more calls and emails, and touch 49% more accounts. headquarters Riverview, FL Founded 2009 Company size 700+ industry Transportation & Storage Self-driving vehicles aren’t the only groundbreaking innovation happening in the transportation space. Something astounding happened this past year at BlueGrace Logistics, a logistics technology, freight management, and customized transportation management company with more than 10,000 customers across the United States. BlueGrace Logistics used Gong Engage to transform their selling motions and boost pipeline flowthrough and conversion rates. The increase they received in outreach reply rates was outstanding: “Since we launched Gong Engage, our outreach response rates have increased from 16% to 30%. That’s an 88% boost.” —Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales, BlueGrace Logistics It was exactly what BlueGrace needed, but couldn’t achieve without the right sales engagement solution. Before Engage, BlueGrace’s full-cycle sellers worked in legacy tools that forced them into disjointed sales engagement workflows. Critically, the workflows didn’t support the personalization that’s essential to winning deals in this sector. Sellers wasted time on admin tasks and tool switching, and struggled to prioritize revenue-generating activities. Despite their efforts, they ran low-quality engagement and got poor response rates. Making matters worse, BlueGrace’s sales leaders had limited visibility into their sellers’ onboarding and performance, so coaching was a guessing game. That opaqueness was only compounded by siloed teams and fragmented data, making it so sales leaders couldn’t access the analytics they needed to run day-to-day operations or make critical business decisions. BlueGrace’s sales engagement system was broken… until they consolidated their people, data, and workflows in one unified platform: Gong. Streamlined workflows enable 88% more replies Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales at BlueGrace, was ready to eliminate the often-used but rarely effective “spray-and-pray” tactics that were a mainstay on his team. It was time to shift from quantity to quality engagement. That meant leaving the team’s legacy tools behind. Today, his full-cycle reps manage their entire lead-to-close sales process in Gong. “We live in Gong. It’s our sales team’s primary solution for their day-to-day work. All our outreach, daily planning, Scorecards, metrics, and performance management happens in Gong.” — Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales, BlueGrace Logistics Bryce’s teams now use streamlined flows for activities, events, and key industries, all of which include email templates and phone scripts that can be personalized. The workflow is more efficient and the customer journey is tailored and cohesive from first touch to close. These workflow improvements moved BlueGrace’s reply rates by 88% (from 16% to 30%). The sales (and revenue) teams see their Salesforce data in Gong’s “Deals” board, which helps with precise pipeline management. Everyone updates their opportunities and revenue predictions directly in Gong, so there’s no platform switching. This gives BlueGrace’s customers a smooth, high-quality experience that helps close more deals. Improved productivity drives 52% more actions and 49% more accounts touched Today, Bryce’s sellers spend more time selling. (Good thing too: According to Forrester, sales reps usually spend 77% of their time on non-selling activities.) Since adopting Engage, BlueGrace sellers execute 52% more sales calls and emails, and touch 49% more accounts. How are they achieving such outstanding results? With help from Gong’s proprietary AI models. Gong’s AI-powered workflows help users save time while staying up to date on their key deal activities. With generated call summaries and prioritized daily to-do lists, for example, sellers spend less time on administrative tasks and more time making calls and sending personalized emails. With Gong’s full visibility into the highlights and next best steps in each account, sales leaders have the insights they need to coach their teams to more closed-won deals. Plus, leaders can quickly review call summaries and key performance metrics for any individual or deal. They’re covering more accounts than ever before, and getting great results. “Our recent class of new hires is getting 2x the expected revenue productivity, even in a challenging market. And we’re continuing to hire, which not a lot of companies can say right now. The only thing I can attribute that to is Gong.” —Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales, BlueGrace Logistics A single source of truth unifies the entire team The distributed nature of BlueGrace’s workforce previously made it hard to confirm that every team was using the same data. That’s not an issue anymore. Since Bryce brought his nine geographically dispersed teams and their data into a unified platform, everyone — from the frontlines to executives — is on the same page about pipeline health. They all have access to a single source of truth that provides them with the complete context of their customers’ and prospects’ accounts. That includes all of BlueGrace’s interactions and past actions with each account. Historically, Bryce’s teams struggled to get good front-end data about their sales activities. This made performance management and pipeline predictability very difficult, as everything was based on anecdotal or self-reported information. Now, BlueGrace’s sales teams have coachable insights at their fingertips. As Bryce says, “Gong has become our single source of truth for performance management.” Having everyone in one platform also means Bryce can build flows for sales teams or pursuit groups, with leaders in different departments and locations contributing to those flows. “That’s been critical. As we scale our sales team in multiple locations, we need a place to collaborate. Gong is the community for my sales teams. We can be anywhere in the world and still be part of that community.” —Bryce Williford, SVP of Sales, BlueGrace Logistics BlueGrace relies on Gong in a challenging market BlueGrace has had so much success transforming their workflows and coaching with Engage that, even in the current market, they’re growing their business and hiring new reps. With an 88% lift in reply rates, they understandably need more sellers in their roster! In fact, they now use Gong as an incentive in their sales rep recruiting campaigns. Bryce even plans to build his upcoming sales KPI processes entirely on the platform. As he says, “The success is evident from at all levels of our organization, from the CEO down to our entry-level sales reps. We wouldn’t have the success we’re having today — in a very challenging market — if it wasn’t for our partnership with Gong.” Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one How a Google sales team got hours of its time back using Gong Global Software Visibility, Insights, and Outcomes: The Secret Sauce to Sustainable Growth at Kustomer Small Business Coaching Deal Execution North America Software Upwork’s RevOps team rockets to 95% sales forecast accuracy using Gong Small Business Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software

The post How BlueGrace’s reps got an 88% lift in reply rates using Gong Engage appeared first on Gong.

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 How Gong Forecast helps Crayon spend 66% less time in forecasting calls Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Media & Internet Verse.ai drives 76% revenue growth and 25% more accurate forecasting with Gong Commercial Engage Forecast North America Software A refined pipeline: EdgePetrol boosts their pipe feed by 300% with Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa Software

The post Round the World in Many Ways: How Mimecast Secured a Successful Global Messaging Rollout with Data appeared first on Gong.

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 Khoros Keeps Managers and CSMs Accountable to Each Other With Gong Small Business Coaching Strategic Initiatives North America Software Shopify Creates a Learning Environment For Their Sales Team Enterprise Coaching Software How Gong Helped Culture Amp Stay Ahead of Market Trends Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Global Software

The post How Funnel Increased Messaging Adoption by 76% Across Global Teams with Gong appeared first on Gong.

Gong for BDRs: How Aircall boosted qualified pipeline by 35% in EMEA

Hannah Hapin — Sat, 25 Feb 2023 01:05:16 +0000

Gong for BDRs: How Aircall boosted qualified pipeline by 35% in EMEA Coaching Deal Execution Small Business Global Business Services 35% increase in qualified pipeline The challenge Aircall’s EMEA team was working in the dark. The team was operating off of reps’ and managers’ hypotheticals and role-play calls, not reality. They needed a way to cut through the opinions and get to the data. The outcome By implementing Gong into their UK&I office, Aircall was able to have immediate access to what was really happening in their calls and pipeline. With this new data backed knowledge, the EMEA team was able to improve their onboarding and coaching while positively impacting the rest of their org. Watch the video Headquarters New York, NY Founded 2014 Company Size 201-500 Industry Telecommunications Pre-Gong, nothing seemed clear. No analysis we did compared to actually being on the phone trying to get better. With Gong, everything is a real-world example and a more complete way of learning and improving. Jack Obertelli BDR Manager UK&I “A phone can (and should) do more than make calls.” That’s from Jack Obertelli of Aircall, a global, cloud-based call centre and phone system solution that integrates with almost any business tool. It interacts with CRM, help desk, and even productivity tools like Slack. As Aircall puts it, the phone can live in — and between — everything you do. By design, Aircall empowers every professional to have richer conversations, thanks to its integrations and ease of use. Jack credits Gong with helping him move from being a Business Development Rep (BDR) to his current role of BDR Manager UK&I. His first job out of university was in a BDR role. “It was very phone-intensive,” he said. “The training was very hands-on. There was no such thing as call transcripts. Call recordings? Not a chance. Lots of learning on the job.” When Jack joined Aircall, Gong was only used by the company’s US-based team, so Jack was still living in a sales world that was dominated by reps’ and managers’ hypotheticals and role-play calls, not reality. Everything changed for the team once Gong came to the UK&I office. “We knew about Gong and were excited to start using it to help our team. As soon as our office got its hands on Gong, we dove right in.” Led by their boss, Sean Hayes (Director of Business Development, EMEA) and supported by Jack’s colleague, Nura Al-Kital (Team Lead BDR, Northern Europe), the Aircall EMEA BDR team was all in. And the results speak for themselves: Since implementing Gong, Aircall has realised a 35% increase in qualified pipeline in EMEA. Aircall also uses Gong for coaching and onboarding, and to help guide its strategic initiatives. How Gong improves Aircall’s coaching and onboarding You know them as the two tenets of any thriving sales organisation. And when they’re executed effectively and efficiently (and backed by data), coaching and onboarding can take a sales team from good to off-the-charts. They save time, lower costs, and ultimately help close more deals faster. Gong for coaching Gong is the ultimate sales coaching platform, empowering teams to “clone their A-players” and transform the entire team into superstars. It’s sales coaching with rocket fuel. Sean Hayes, Aircall’s Director of Business Development, EMEA, loves that Gong just works. It’s now been built into Aircall’s workflow and process. Sean uses Gong in every one of his weekly 1:1 meetings. He’s found a ton of value in the patience metrics in particular. They put a focus on ”talk less and listen/pause/breathe more.” “Generally speaking,” says Sean, “sales reps overestimate their ability to be patient on the phone with buyers. And most BDRs would say they’re good at this skill.” Without Gong, Sean listens to calls and gives them a general rating like “good” or “room for improvement” on the BDRs’ patience skills. But that’s only a feeling. It’s not backed by data. If you have no means of measurement, you have no control. And “no control” isn’t exactly a stellar motto for an effective sales team! Gong gives BDRs and their managers the ability to track and report on call effectiveness, with features like patience scores. Sean had an early win with Gong, when he used it to show a BDR who was “not too keen on patience” that his impatience score (0.2) was tied to his close rates. With Gong’s data insights, this BDR moved his patience score up to 1.4 — a huge improvement. “Every time I go into Gong and see that he’s maintained his patience score,” shares Sean, “I smile. This would not have been possible without Gong.” Jack recalls his “Gong is amazing” moment while working as a BDR at Aircall. It came when he began reviewing recorded demos from top performers. Suddenly, he was able to learn from the best-of-the-best BDRs. “I began to truly understand what top reps were saying and how they were saying it. I gleaned best practices and learned which talk tracks moved deals through the pipeline.” Put another way, Jack began to take ownership of his own skills improvement in sales (self-coaching). He proactively sought out Gong recordings and listened to them like they were game tape, to learn from the top sales professionals. (Did it help propel him into a management role? No doubt.) Since moving into his new role, Jack listens to his reps’ Gong calls to uncovers critical interactions (the good and the not-so-good) that ultimately turn into best practices and coachable moments. “With Gong,” says Jack, “it’s just so easy to access and send a link to a sales rep.” Jack loves being able to comment on calls and rate each call using Gong’s Scorecards. Time-stamped comments that reps leave in the call recordings help Aircall managers cut through the noise and “go straight to what is relevant.” Today, trying to run a coaching session without Gong is, well … not so easy. The team just can’t go back to analysing deals without data. Comments provide them with a blueprint and set the agenda for every call review. Everyone on the team adds comments (praise and constructive criticism) to a pre-selected call. Ultimately, these comments prompt lessons that lift up the entire team. The BDRs love using Gong to kick-start manager-led coaching. They now send calls to Nura Al-Kital, their Team Lead, and ask for feedback at specific points in the call. Paired with Nura’s proactive efforts (like searching out best-practice calls to share with reps), the full spectrum of ‘Gong for Coaching’ is covered. “As our team has grown, I’ve relied heavily on the activity feed to track our reps’ performance — it’s super-easy.” Gong for onboarding The Gong for onboarding platform also means there’s no more call shadowing. Instead, Gong gives new hires a Call Library of curated recordings they can use to onboard faster. Before Aircall implemented Gong, teams relied heavily on a “bank of recorded calls.” While this was more efficient than trying to find time on a rep’s calendar to shadow calls (and hoping for ones they could learn from), it wasn’t as powerful as what Gong offers. With Gong, new hires have curated call recordings where the most relevant sections are tagged with comments. They provide best practices, teachable moments, and the ability to see how both parties respond during a video conference call. This “lens of reality,” as Aircall refers to it, is helpful in understanding what success sounds (and looks) like. The team loves having the ability to regularly update and refresh the Call Library as their market (and messaging) changes and evolves. Nura says Gong helps “normalise the experience” of cold calling. “Cold calling is hard! Everyone makes mistakes. Most calls are rejections — more than 80%! I couldn’t imagine what it would be like training someone without having Gong’s call recordings. I feel like that would be a different world.” Nura loves pulling up a specific Gong call for each part of the onboarding training. Have BDRs who need to learn how to address pricing? Pick some calls in the Gong Call Library. How about objection handling? Gong has it covered. Competitors? Gong. But there’s so much more on offer than coaching and onboarding though. Gong helps Aircall make strategic business decisions Gong has also boosted Aircall’s ability to understand pricing and competitive intelligence. Jack credits Gong with helping Aircall focus more on targeted, strategic calls. “With Gong, we can now quantify the value of every call. It’s no longer ‘spray and pray.’ We can spend more time on each call because we know what works.” Aircall also uses Gong to distill the subtle distinctions between markets — especially international ones. Nura runs a team that is primarily German-speaking. Having calls transcribed in German is incredibly important to the team, and Gong is the only tool her team uses that has this translation capability. Gong means her team can filter German-speaking calls and tweak messaging according to whichever details are the most relevant. Given that certain Aircall features are more popular in particular parts of the world, Gong’s ability to filter by region helps focus her team on winnable deals. And as Sean shared, “the numbers speak for themselves.” After using Gong across northern Europe in the first quarter of 2021, Aircall broke records for the amount of qualified pipeline delivered by the business development function, with a 35% increase! “Working with Gong has made it a lot easier for me to set quantitative benchmarks for what good looks like. If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it. With Gong, we can now measure everything that matters.” Gong’s future at Aircall Gong has made raving fans of the entire Aircall BDR team — both newbies and more experienced reps. “Gong is fully embedded in our workflow,” shares Sean. “It’s so easy to add Gong calls to the Call Library so new BDRs can review them, but we see adoption at all experience levels. As soon as the more tenured BDRs realised the benefits of Gong, they were sold.” Sean has noticed that his team now engages in more “healthy competition,” like who has the longest story told by a customer, for example. (It’s a good thing! It means your reps are drawing intel out of their customers.) And who doesn’t want to manage a team that’s fully engaged and wins more often? It’s clear that Gong has found a home at Aircall; it’s now built right into the culture. And why not? The numbers continue to defy expectations. 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 BlueCat Empowers Their Field Team to Understand Their Pipeline Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Business Services How Rapid7 secured an increase in win rates using Gong Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software Measure the Immeasurable: Remove the Hypothetical and Increase Transparency in Your Sales Process Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Global Software

The post Gong for BDRs: How Aircall boosted qualified pipeline by 35% in EMEA appeared first on Gong.

ServiceTitan Gains Higher Close Rates with Gong for Deals

Hannah Hapin — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 20:44:38 +0000

ServiceTitan Gains Higher Close Rates with Gong for Deals Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Enterprise North America Business Services The challenge ServiceTitan’s priorities were to try to win as much new business as possible and develop the members of their team to make sure that they are as good as they can be in their function. The outcome By using Gong’s Deal Intelligence capabilities and scorecards, ServiceTitan was able to improve their new reps’ time to productivity and improve the sales team’s close rates. Watch video Headquarters Glendale, CA Founded 2008 Employees ~1000 Industry Software Platform for Contractors Gaining Higher Close Rates ServiceTitan is the world’s leading all-in-one software for commercial and residential HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other field service businesses. With Gong brought in as their source of truth for their sales team, ServiceTitan was able to: Enhance coaching between managers and reps Gain intelligence and visibility into the deal lifecycle Improve messaging that maps solutions to pain points through scorecards “I didn’t realize there were so many ways to investigate the way you hold a sales call. I mean it’s kind of a thing: You don’t know what you don’t know,” Billy Stein, the Sales Strategy and Operations Manager at ServiceTitan admits, “I’m constantly finding out that there’s something new that is beneficial to us that we didn’t even know about.” “And Gong is so many tools that are built in to help us take that next step.” Customer Video 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 Maggie Hott of Webflow uses Gong for Work-Life Balance Small Business Coaching North America Software How Hive’s Revenue Strategy Evolved to Achieve 30% Growth in Pipeline Opportunities With Gong Small Business Engage North America Software Impact Cultivates a Sales Culture of Collaboration and Improvement Small Business Coaching Global Software

The post ServiceTitan Gains Higher Close Rates with Gong for Deals appeared first on Gong.

Research, recommendations, and reality: How Gong helped Mintel increase win rates by 34%

Hannah Hapin — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 20:00:17 +0000

Research, recommendations, and reality: How Gong helped Mintel increase win rates by 34% Coaching Deal Execution Enterprise Europe/Middle East/Africa Business Services 34% Increase in win rate The challenge Mintel wanted to further improve their efficiency. With a large portfolio of more than 6,000 clients worldwide, it was hard to detect patterns in calls, which delayed improvements to customer service processes. Mintel needed a single tool that could provide guidance based on data from feedback in client calls. The outcome Since adopting Gong, Mintel has increased its win rates by 34%. They’ve done that by creating a culture of coaching that enables employees to track their own progress and share client feedback with the colleagues who need to hear it most. Gong easily identifies areas for improvement so teams at Mintel can adopt policies that eliminate gaps in client service. The company’s customer care is smoother than ever, which has improved Mintel’s efficiency and its win rates. Read PDF Headquarters London, UK Founded 1972 Company Size 1000-5000 Industry Advertising and Marketing We’ve seen a dramatic increase in our win rates. They’re up by 34% since we brought Gong on board. Josh Morgan Head of Sales Enablement Surface your data to float above the competition As a global leader in market research, Mintel has over 50 years of experience in understanding what consumers want and why. Not surprisingly, its go-to-market teams love data. It’s how they know they’re on the right track when it comes to customer service. Previously, with over 6,000 global clients, data patterns weren’t always easy to spot in calls. That’s why Mintel’s sales and client success teams wanted a more efficient and effective way to deliver customer care based on feedback. “We bring value to our clients, and we do that by tapping into our tools,” says Patricia Avila, Mintel’s Director of Client Success, Mid-Market CPG and Beauty. Her team brought Gong on board to surface numbers they knew would help them succeed by improving their internal and client-facing processes. Create a coaching culture that works If you want to improve your customer experience, start by looking inward. “We’ve now created a coaching culture, and that’s so important to us,” says Josh Morgan, Head of Sales Enablement. Once they brought Gong onboard, Mintel’s teams saw numerous ways to improve their effectiveness with customers. Because Mintel works with clients across many industries, it often rolls out new initiatives. Getting internal teams up to speed can eat away at valuable time, which results in lost or stalled deals. Being able to review calls using Gong means closing the knowledge gap sooner. That’s especially important for enterprise teams that use peer-to-peer examples. “When new initiatives come out, we use our recorded calls to highlight the best-in-class examples,” says Josh. Being able to easily share top-notch recorded calls also made manager-to-rep coaching more effective, especially for those working remotely. “With Gong, they just tag me and I can see exactly what’s happening. It’s almost like being a fly on the wall of calls,” says Patricia. This has been important for new hires as well as more seasoned reps. Not being able to offer in-person feedback or praise can make onboarding difficult. The right tools have shown Mintel’s reps that even when you’re not sharing physical space, support is available. “When they share things in Gong, they can either send me calls where they used too many filler words, or things they’re proud of,” says Patricia. “I love being able to support my team from afar and really feel like I’m with them. I love watching them grow.” Improve your efficiency, improve your win rate Normalizing a culture of continuous feedback did more than streamline coaching for the Mintel team. It also revealed trends that had held the sales team back. Since bringing Gong on board, offering coaching that’s based on real numbers has helped Mintel reach an impressive 34% increase in their win rate. “Gong helped us see a trend that was happening across Mintel. It turns out we didn’t multi-thread enough,” says Josh. (That means their teams didn’t connect with more than one contact at the buyer’s company.) Once they started multi-threading, as recommended by Gong, their teams sold more, faster. It turned out that four contacts is the magic number for multi-threading at Mintel. Since discovering that pattern, there’s a new multi-threading policy in place that’s gotten impressive results. Mintel also conducts pipeline reviews using Gong’s Deal Boards. That enables sales leaders to quickly scan stats and prioritize which deals need help now, based on how sales calls are going. “With these pipeline reviews, we can quickly pull up stats on how much velocity is in the deal and where the deal stands, rather than trawling through lots of opportunities on Salesforce,” says Josh. It’s a highly efficient way to create coaching plans that work. That kind of focus is also visible in the advice Gong regularly and automatically provides to Mintel’s teams. “If deals lag for 15 days or more, or if they’re not multi-threaded, Gong lets us know. That’s helped speed up the work we do,” says Josh. “Efficiency is a really crucial part of how Gong makes us better.” Use the right tools to align everyone On the client success side, communication remains a top priority. Mintel is particularly interested in being able to go back and confirm important pieces of information that came to light during customer calls. Taking notes during conversations with clients while actively listening is tough, particularly in work-from-home environments. “There are so many times when we drill down into our notebooks, and we’ve missed one second of something fantastic a client said,” says Patricia. “The good news is that we now use Gong on every client call.” Because of that, CSMs and their leaders can review a recording any time after a call and hear exactly what the client said. “Gong allows our team to listen in after the fact so we can provide the proper support based on the conversation.” Because call snippets are easily shareable, Mintel can even send parts of a recorded call with a client to confirm their agreement on any project. “There’s no room for errors or miscommunication, and if there’s any doubt on our end, we can quickly ensure that we’re 100% aligned,” says Patricia. “It’s made the work-from-home environment so much easier.” Always look to your metrics Despite having employees scattered around the globe, improving productivity and customer experiences is straightforward these days. Mintel uses trackable metrics that mean the same thing to everyone involved. “We love numbers. They allow us to see whether we’re hitting our marks,” says Patricia. Because those numbers are available at the rep, manager, and executive level, there’s an equal playing field, as everyone has access to the same data. It helps keep everyone on the same page, particularly when it comes to the reasons for launching internal initiatives. Plus, reps can engage in self-coaching in addition to the coaching they receive from their managers. “Instead of me always saying, ‘You could do this better,’ Gong allows them to see that on their own,” says Patricia. “They can see stats on how patient they are, or whether they’re really listening to their client or leading the conversation too often.” Those clear statistics are invaluable when it comes to improving customer calls. If a rep has a high talk ratio, it’s a clear indicator that they need to listen more. If there’s a pattern of poor talk ratios, managers know that further coaching is needed, and they know exactly which reps need it. As a tool, Gong has influenced the Mintel team across the board. From helping them adopt a coaching culture, to drastically improving their win rates, and enabling a more seamless distributed work experience, Gong provides critical data points. “It’s a tool that makes my life easier; one that keeps my team excited and motivated,” says Patricia. Josh says that future plans for Gong include using key-word trackers to keep an eye on competitor mentions during conversations, as well as building a sales framework within Gong. “We’re really excited about what’s happened, and even more so about what’s to come!” Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one How the Datarails team used Gong to develop a whopping 300% increase in ARR Small Business Coaching Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software How Gong Insights Helped Workato Pivot During COVID-19 and Hit 102% of Plan Small Business Strategic Initiatives North America Software Locking in predictable revenue: Gong takes Piano’s forecast accuracy to 90% Enterprise Deal Execution Global Software

The post Research, recommendations, and reality: How Gong helped Mintel increase win rates by 34% appeared first on Gong.

Gong’s Real Time Customer Feedback Drives Quotient’s Results

Hannah Hapin — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 00:23:59 +0000

Gong’s Real Time Customer Feedback Drives Quotient’s Results Coaching Strategic Initiatives Enterprise North America Business Services The challenge Quotient Technology needed a way to hear the unfiltered voice of its customers and anticipate their needs, especially in an ever-shifting market. The outcome With Gong’s platform, Quotient was able to better understand its customers and in turn drive more visibility regarding revenue strategy and organizational decision-making. Watch recording Headquarters Salt Lake City, UT Founded 1998 Company Size 1000+ Industry Technology, Information and Media With Gong, even in unprecedented times, we can connect customer insights to drive internal change, and grow results. Jess Shuman RVP of Household Sales In order to deliver the best outcomes for your customers, you need the most authentic, accurate understanding of their sentiment all along the way. Giving people what they want means being able to point your services in the right direction from the start, not just constantly course-correcting after the fact. That’s one of the main reasons Quotient Technology uses Gong. Quotient is a leading digital promotions and media technology company, creating cohesive omnichannel brand-building and sales-driving opportunities. Jess Shuman is Quotient’s RVP of Household Sales, and she’s a big believer in Gong’s power. “As we navigate business complexities, we know the context of words and situational perspectives is challenging,” she says. “If you’re not hearing words directly and in real-time, how do you know you’re maximizing strategy?” Finding true north when it comes to your business can make all the difference in delivering the best possible product or service. “Gong is transformative in enabling objectives and growth across industries,” says Shuman. “Gong is your compass.” Here’s how Quotient uses Gong to drive visibility regarding revenue strategy and organizational decision-making. Focus on the customer first Wanting to become your customer’s most trusted partner takes more than coaching—it takes a kind of obsession. For Shuman and her team, that obsession with customer stories, paired with deep listening, turned out to be the key to driving that trust. “To me, the power of Gong is ‘what were they saying to us just two hours ago?’,” says Shuman. When a team is focused on making knowledgeable connections, access to real-time feedback turns information into insights. To that end, Shuman loves features like Gong’s Points of Interest, where users can look at key objections being received from customers. “Can we, as a team, translate these customer stories into why this matters?” asks Shuman. “This creates more of a CDP-type platform with those unified customer insights.” When you have enough insights that your CRM functions more like a CDP, you can set your compass on longer-term relationships, and your team can more easily align insights with company objectives. And Gong allows Shuman and her team to see if the insights they uncover are being integrated, and how their customers are reacting in an ever-shifting market. “I really use Gong almost like I use Google search,” says Shuman. “I’ll search the term, then see what percentage of calls it’s being used in. And then I think, is there a certain client or something product-specific where I truly want to understand how those insights are being incorporated, and how our customers are reacting?” Shuman uses that Points of Interest feature to validate her strategic choices and ensure that reps are always integrating those new insights into their sales calls. “Gamify your customer earning calls and test for understanding with every function that supports their business,” says Shuman. Connect those customer insights across the organization For sellers who want to drive multiple partner success, Shuman found the most critical element is understanding and connecting customer stories. For some departments—like customer support—that comes more naturally. But every team from senior leadership, to product, to deal desk can benefit from the very real impact these customer insights can have on the larger organization. This is where that clear, real-time context and shared vocabulary come in handy. “Is your team able to articulate the ROI implications of your solution? And are we navigating objections or challenges?” asks Shuman. This is what she calls the “Yeah, but.” Being able to track those moments in a sales call and respond with a message built on the back of customer stories gets your intentions across clearly. Having a platform that helps make these connections evident makes onboarding new hires all the more seamless. There’s a firehose of information when you first get started, and longer ramp times lead to fewer effective customer conversations. “Think about the power of equipping a new hire with real-time customer insights into challenges and opportunities,” says Shuman. “I’ve seen it time and time again leveraging Gong with our new hires. It will accelerate their ramp time. And even more importantly than that, they don’t have that exchange of having to ask customers questions that they’ve already addressed.” Similarly, for tenured employees, customer strategy is integral to keeping up with market trends. When you begin to see declines in certain areas of business, it’s time to challenge thinking. And having data to back up those challenges is motivational. Being able to hear verbatim what’s going through a customer’s mind in a dynamic way has the power to set your business on the right course. “I think sometimes we don’t realize that we can take your customer stories and make true internal decisions based on client growth objectives.” Adopt an agility mindset Staying on top of constantly changing markets, with customers who are more discriminating with their budgets than ever, requires an agile mindset. The way things always worked doesn’t cut it, and agility-focused performance teams excel most often at strategy- and people-related practices. “I always use Gong as a pure coaching platform first for giving folks feedback,” says Shuman. “But I also love to think about how it can help drive company strategy and of course, drive results.” Some of Shuman’s tips for leveraging Gong in order to drive those results are: Use economic pulse trackers: Search specific terms and determine what percentage of the time it comes up in conversation and how you can correlate that with outcome Share best practices in the folders: Learning from real successes and improvements helps keep your team on top of trends and the latest techniques Measure effective navigation using the active listening tracker: When you hear “Am I understanding that correctly?” in a call, you know your team is making connections and deeply understanding the customer. Create an execution plan for incremental improvement: When you only set big and bold KPIs you don’t always see the results. Look for incremental improvement and you’ll see movement immediately. By listening, connecting customer stories to our entire organization, and with an agile mindset, we all will navigate these choppy waters and grow revenue during times of instability. And that I am very very confident in using Gong. Jess Shuman | RVP of Household Sales For Quotient, understanding customer stories through building trust and deep listening, connecting those insights to internal strategy, and remaining agile based on the knowledge earned have driven results. Shuman has seen a revenue increase in one of her key growth focus areas, and she’s projecting more great results to come. “Use Gong to connect these insights back and find ways to make incremental changes within that coaching plan for your sellers,” says Shuman. “By doing that we can connect customer stories, drive internal change, and grow results.” 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 Intelex enhances onboarding and collaboration to strengthen sales strategy Small Business Coaching Deal Execution North America Software A Clearer Shot: How I Used Customer Insights to Make Better Decisions at Indeed Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Media & Internet How Tinuiti Used Gong to Close 50% More Recurring Revenue from Cross-selling Small Business Coaching Strategic Initiatives North America Software

The post Gong’s Real Time Customer Feedback Drives Quotient’s Results appeared first on Gong.

Watch Appen use Gong to onboard CSMs 4 months faster

Hannah Hapin — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 18:41:36 +0000

Watch Appen use Gong to onboard CSMs 4 months faster Coaching Deal Execution Small Business Asia-Pacific North America Business Services 4 month reduction of time to onboard a new CSM The challenge Appen’s Customer Success team was looking for a more efficient way to manage their communication with customers. The outcome Enabling Gong has not only allowed the CS Team at Appen to easily access all calls and emails for the entire lifecycle of an account, but has also reduced customer churn. Download the PDF Headquarters Chatswood, AU Founded 1996 Employees 800+ Industry Artificial Intelligence What I noticed, especially from the newer CSMs, was that my time to onboard began to significantly decrease. Our onboarding time was shrinking from six months to five months to four months. Ultimately today, I’m able to onboard a brand new CSM within just over two months down from six months pre-Gong. Vaishali Reed Director of Global Customer Success & Programs Operations “I saw Gong and I loved it immediately.” That’s what Vaishali “Shali” Reed said when we asked her to share her reaction to hearing the word, “Gong.” Shali is the Director of Global Customer Success & Programs Operations at Appen, a publicly-traded company that provides data used for the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence products. The Appen platform collects and labels images, text, speech, audio, video, and other data used to build and continuously improve the world’s most innovative artificial intelligence systems. They are helping create the technology of the future — working on a wide ranging span of projects from autonomous vehicles, chatbots, to ground-breaking robotics. Sounds complicated? It is. Put simply, they give companies the confidence to deploy world-class AI by providing intelligent solutions for all their data-labeling needs. And Shali’s job at Appen covers a lot of ground. She manages a team of customer success managers (CSMs) across SMB, mid-market, enterprise, and strategic accounts as well as a team who run Programs Operations. Her day-to-day is focused on building strategic processes and workflows to facilitate existing user onboarding, identify and implement CSM coaching tools (including Gong — of course!) and optimize Gainsight, Salesforce, and the entire tech stack at Appen. And if that’s not keeping Shali busy enough, she also develops the new hire onboarding and promotion pathways. Her team focuses mostly on adoption and utilization. “We’re the platform experts that onboard users. We ensure users have all of the knowledge they need to be able to launch jobs on the Appen data labeling platform.” Prior to Gong, Shali often engaged in the “fun” game of Telephone. And by fun, we really mean frustrating, inefficient, and often a huge waste of time and effort. Telephone game example: Manager: “How did your customer call go?” CSM: “Great. Here are my four most important takeaways.” “But what if the CSM leaves out that fifth point — and it turns out to be invaluable feedback?” inquires Shali. “There was no way to go back and validate what was actually said in the call.” The “game” ended up being a huge pain point for the CSM team. Gong, the “super-smart, intelligent tool,” changed everything for Shali. “Not only does Gong help me understand what our CSMs are doing but it also eliminates objectivity in the telephone game.” With Gong, Appen can “see the full story, not just the four points the CSM thought were most important.” THE GONG ONBOARDING “TIPPING POINT” 6+ months. That’s how long it took Shali to onboard a new CSM in a LBG (“Life Before Gong”) world. “The first three months for a new CSM were reserved for just learning about AI, learning about data labeling, learning about machine learning, and really getting up to speed with the industry,” said Shali. “The next three months were spent learning the different use cases on the platform.” “The onboarding process was completely inefficient.” And painfully long. A new CSM was not able to ramp up for six full months. Two full quarters. It was impossible for Shali to measure the “ROI” of a new hire. And, even if she could come up a number, the investment in time, effort, resources, and money was already a sunk cost. One of the first things Shali did after deploying Gong was to build the customer success library. She began creating playlists and critical areas to help with the onboarding process. According to Shali, the “Gong Tipping Point” for Appen was about six months after the CS library was up and running. Gong forever changed — and improved — the CSM onboarding program. This fact almost had Shali speechless. “Amazing,” she said. “I can have a fully productive CSM managing a full book of business within their first quarter. That’s unheard of for most really technical companies with a complex platform and product.” FOUR KEY ADVANTAGES GONG OFFERS CUSTOMER SUCCESS TEAMS Gong offers Customer Success leaders like Shali several key advantages: Shared Memory: All calls and emails for the entire lifecycle of the account are recorded and easily searchable. Reduced Churn: Gong’s insights help teams uncover the lead indicators of customer churn — quickly and efficiently get alerted on critical renewals for competitive and market-risk accounts. Drive Upsell Opportunity & Growth: Easily monitor leading indicators of customer growth Voice of Customer: Share the true voice of the customer with the product, product marketing, customer education, and operations teams. Appen is currently taking advantage of all four of the above. 1. Shared Memory Shali’s weekly one-on-one meetings prior to implementing Gong often consisted of her team voicing frustration and confusion. It would not be uncommon for her to hear a team member say, “I’m doing so many things and I don’t know where to focus. I’m trying to take notes via notepad on my laptop. I have a physical notepad (with a piece of paper and pen) as well. I’m trying to take notes — I really am — but I know I’m missing a lot of critical details or discovery questions I could be asking customers.” “Now that Gong is recording all of those calls,” said Shali, “we are able to not only do all of our prep work ahead of time in terms of discovery, but we’re also able to really get on the conversation and truly listen to the customer.” “It’s amazing. CSMs are no longer listening to talk; they are actually listening to LISTEN.” Also pre-Gong, CSMs approached calls with their agenda — a list of questions they “had to get through.” It mattered less what the customer was saying and more that they needed to ask their key questions and capture their answers. That’s not listening to learn. That’s not listening to understand. It’s simply listening so you can talk (again). With Gong’s “infinite memory,” a CSM steps into a call with a rough agenda and asks the customer to let them know where they want to spend a little bit more or less time on various action items. CSMs can now “peel the onion back” where it’s most needed. “Gong has helped Appen take the subjectivity out of conversations,” said Shali. Now, when a CSM asks a manager to listen to a call they think had some risk, an experienced manager can go into the call and pinpoint exactly what the customer said and when. Talk about a coachable moment! Not everyone comprehends the same word or phrase in the same fashion. Tone matters. Context matters. Gong eliminates potential confusion and ambiguity. Shali: “As somebody who has been in a customer success role for 10+ years, I can read between the lines better than my associate CSMs, who are often fresh out of college.” Again, Gong serves up incredible teachable moments. 2. Reduced Churn Today, thanks to Gong, Shali can check on the health of a customer relationship proactively. From a renewal perspective, she can see all communications nested under one account, which helps her sniff out if there are any signs of an account churning, and take appropriate actions to prevent it. “If I don’t see any activity on that opportunity for 45 days and my CSM is telling me there’s no risk associated with that renewal, well, I’m kinda looking at them sideways.” Enter Gong: “Let’s review the data!” Shali says that Gong allows her to hold her team accountable vs. just taking them at their word. 3. Drive Upsell Opportunity and Growth No doubt about it: acquiring new customers is a challenge. That’s why tapping into your existing customer base for expansion is crucial for success. A wise company tracks and makes the most of these opportunities to grow within a single customer account. After all, your existing customers know and trust your product and your sales team. Appen is ahead of the pack. Shali and her team began sharing CSM calls with the Sales team: “Listen to this Gong snippet. It sounds like a great expansion opportunity” or “This snippet suggests a new team that’s potentially interested.” With the CSMs and sales teams working together, they are able to maximize an account’s value. 4. Voice of customer Today, Appen is at the point where different teams are involved with Gong — and the entire ecosystem of Gong users in the company benefit from the customer insights that can be gathered from the product. CSMs are usually the closest people to a customer after the ink on a contract has dried. They are the partners that make or break the bulk of the customer’s journey. Through countless conversations, they are privy to tons of feedback, requests, and use cases that many other parts of an organization are hungry for. But with Gong, the other teams at Appen are not as dependent on Shali’s CSMs to interpret a customer’s reality for a particular account. They can listen to the calls themselves, and focus on what’s important to them. Gong helps share the true voice of the customer with product, product marketing, customer education, and operations teams. They are empowered to review and listen to entire calls (or pull relevant snippets). And if they need to have a follow-up — more in-depth conversation — it’s easy! Shali is excited to continue evangelizing the platform. She is thrilled to see how other teams at Appen will leverage the power of Gong. When we asked Shali if Gong was a “nice to have” tool, she emphatically replied, “NO!” followed by, “Gong is NEED TO HAVE.” We are happy you feel that way, Shali. 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 Reality-based forecasts: Faster, smarter, more aligned Small Business Deal Execution North America Software scaleMatters and Gong: Elevating LabWare’s sales strategy to new heights Partner North America Watch Appen use Gong to onboard CSMs 4 months faster Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Asia-Pacific North America Business Services

The post Watch Appen use Gong to onboard CSMs 4 months faster appeared first on Gong.

BlueCat Empowers Their Field Team to Understand Their Pipeline

Hannah Hapin — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 03:02:30 +0000

BlueCat Empowers Their Field Team to Understand Their Pipeline Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Small Business North America Business Services The challenge BlueCat was experiencing challenges around pipeline management — not understanding why forecasts weren’t accurate. The outcome Using Gong has helped BlueCat understand what the sentiment is with the customer, and whether or not engagement is going up or down. Most importantly, it helps them determine whether they have the right people involved in a deal to ensure success. Watch video Headquarters Toronto, ON Founded 2001 Employees 400+ Industry Adaptive DNS Gong gives us direct visibility into the why. Jason van Ravenswaay Head Of Global Sales Operations Increasing Visibility BlueCat is the Adaptive DNS company. Their mission is to help the world’s largest organizations thrive on network complexity, from the edge to the core. To do this, BlueCat re-imagined DNS. The result – Adaptive DNS – is a dynamic, open, secure, scalable, and automated resource that supports the most challenging digital transformation initiatives, like adoption of hybrid cloud and rapid application development. Prior to Gong, the challenges that BlueCat was experiencing were really around pipeline management. They had inconsistent results in different regions and really, we didn’t understand the “why.” By using Gong, they’ve improved coaching, gotten visibility into customer engagement, and have easy access to product feedback. Jason van Ravenswaay, the ‎Head Of Global Sales Operations at ‎BlueCat shares, “I think I’m most proud of the fact that we’ve increased communication across departments. We had a sales org that was going and doing what they were supposed to do. We had a product organization that was going and developing what they thought customers want. Gong has really allowed us to understand the value that customers see in our product and where our product could potentially go in the future.” Customer Video Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one Alignment across RevOps and reps brings Frontify a 30% increase in lead conversion Small Business Deal Execution Engage Forecast Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software Hello, new reality: How Jellyvision uses Gong to keep its team enabled and engaged Small Business Coaching North America Software A Clearer Shot: How I Used Customer Insights to Make Better Decisions at Indeed Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Media & Internet

The post BlueCat Empowers Their Field Team to Understand Their Pipeline appeared first on Gong.