Global 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 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 Gong Helped Culture Amp Stay Ahead of Market Trends Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Global Software 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

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How a Google sales team got hours of its time back using Gong

Hannah Hapin — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 17:27:54 +0000

How a Google sales team got hours of its time back using Gong Global Software Most companies are sitting on plenty of sales data. But few companies have Google-level amounts of data. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, you know that managing data is tough, no matter how much data you’ve got. It’s tough to corral, tough to unify, and tough to assess in a way that delivers actionable insights and measurable changes. That is, of course, unless you use Gong. Headquarters Mountain View, CA founded 1998 company size 10,000+ industry Software Development Our partnership with Gong was that piece of magic we needed Mike Chen Director of Product Strategy at Google Google brings data science to sales using Gong Mike Chen is the Director of Product Strategy at Google, and leads sales for the Google ads team, specifically for SMBs. His team enables sellers to go to market effectively and engage directly with their customers. Mike’s motivation for bringing his sales team into Gong was clear: A standardized approach to evaluating and understanding sales data brings leadership onto the same page when they make key business decisions. It also enables everyone from leadership to sales reps to understand and take action on vast quantities of data. With thousands of sellers worldwide, it had long been difficult for Mike and his managers to evaluate individual, team, and regional inputs, outputs, and outcomes at scale. Not surprisingly, the Google sales team is highly data-driven, and Mike wanted to find the best way to track all of their customer and sales data and use it to drive better outcomes. As he put it: “Our partnership with Gong was that piece of magic we needed; it’s been complimentary to how we evaluate our performance. At every level of our org, we now have a standardized view of our sales data, and having that is a game-changer.” Mike has seen firsthand that access to reliable data at scale — and in one platform — is a game-changer for his teams. They’ve already used it with great success… Major revenue boost from efficiency and effectiveness Gong adoption and engagement have been high at Google. That’s made an immense difference in Mike’s sales leaders’ ability to set standards, run evaluations at scale, and adjust their approach across several strategic initiatives. “Across one specific segment of our sales team, we saw a weekly revenue increase that made some of our leadership do a double take,” says Mike. How did they do it? Their managers leveraged three features in Gong: They piloted Gong’s Scorecards by asking a group of managers to rate calls for their sales effectiveness. With that as their baseline, they used a Smart Tracker (which is an AI-trainable model) to identify effective calls. The Smart Tracker yielded similar results to the team’s managers, validating the fact that Google’s sales managers know good calls when they see them. That being said, Google’s sales teams are so large that managers can’t possibly evaluate calls at scale, so they use Gong’s Smart Trackers to pinpoint best-in-class calls across the full sales cycle. That’s how they amassed a Call Library that’s now used to train new hires and refresh the rest of the team. New hires now ramp much faster Mike’s sales teams also use Gong in their sales onboarding program, which consistently serves large numbers of hires around the globe. With help from Gong’s platform and AI capabilities, Google boost in its new-hire graduation rate. That means more people are up to speed and ready to hit the sales floor — and quota — faster, which is great news in terms of efficiency and effectiveness on Google’s sales team. Having seen the results, Mike’s long-term goal is to drastically reduce onboarding times by partnering with Gong. He has big goals, and he feels ready to meet them by the end of 2024 using Gong for onboarding and coaching. 3 principles guide Google’s sales team Mike’s team achieved these remarkable outcomes, in part, because his team’s sales strategies are data-driven, and founded on three principles: Unification Efficiency Effectiveness Mike’s team — like every sales team around the world — typically mined multiple sources for different types of information. Sometimes the information they uncovered was contradictory, and sometimes it was nowhere to be found. What Mike’s team really wanted was a unified platform; a place that could serve up insights based on a cohesive dataset. For Mike, achieving peak efficiency means using the best technology available to remove mindless tasks (like data collection) from sellers, leaving them free to actually sell. Prior to Gong, Google’s sales reps spent hours each week doing tasks that could be entirely automated in the Gong platform. Mike estimates that with the addition of this automation, thousands of sellers are getting back around 12% of their time each year. It was an untouched deposit of savings that Mike was keen to mine. With a more unified and efficient sales workflow in place — thanks to Smart Trackers and a Call Library — Mike’s team was able to collect best-in-class calls that drove their onboarding program to new heights. The team was also free to concentrate on working more effectively as a team and across departments, all in an effort to better serve their customers/prospects. The Google: Gong partnership goes onward and upward Before Gong, Mike’s sales team couldn’t capture all of its sales inputs and actions at scale with the right level of precision. Those days are gone. As Gong’s automation and AI-powered insights expand in the coming year, Google’s sales team will continue using Gong to make valuable gains in unification, efficiency, and effectiveness. Interested in more of the lessons that were revealed at Celebrate ‘23? Watch the keynote address and panel discussion here. A summary of Mike Chen’s fireside chat with Amit Bendov at Celebrate. Join us for Celebrate! 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 Gong Lets HubSpot Sales Reps “Go Back and Watch the Game Tapes” Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives Global Software How Gong Helped Zillow Thrive During a Global Pandemic Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives North America Real Estate BairesDev is 7x more productive at strategic decision-making with Gong. Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Global Software

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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 How Gong Forecast is helping Tackle.io shave 40% off forecasting time Small Business Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software The Gong GOATs: How Demandbase grew its market presence and hiked win rates Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution North America Software How Gong helped Docebo become an efficient revenue team Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software

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Locking in predictable revenue: Gong takes Piano’s forecast accuracy to 90%

Hannah Hapin — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 19:40:52 +0000

Locking in predictable revenue: Gong takes Piano’s forecast accuracy to 90% Deal Execution Enterprise Global Software 90% Forecast accuracy The challenge Before Gong, Piano grappled with a critical hurdle—data fragmentation. Disjointed systems scattered vital insights essential for informed decisions. This lack of reliable data severely compromised global accuracy and revenue predictability. The outcome Piano’s team achieved 90% forecast accuracy and has significantly enhanced overall business decision-making. The team is saving several hours every week on reporting and pipeline inspection, allowing them to shift from reactive to strategic and confidently communicate their forecasts to the CEO and the board. Headquarters Amsterdam founded 2005 company size 800+ industry Software Development In revenue operations, you face an existential question: Does our company know with at least 90% certainty how much revenue is coming in, and when? If you can’t answer yes, it’s hugely challenging to make strategic decisions. Peter Lastowski, the VP of Revenue Operations at Piano knows this intimately — and he needed a way to confidently pinpoint Piano’s forecast. Piano is a rapidly scaling global software company with offices across the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Piano’s platform helps major brands like Air France, the BBC, and LinkedIn to understand and influence their customers’ behavior. Piano experienced a tremendous transformation with Gong. Piano started with Gong’s Conversation Intelligence in 2021 to tighten sales processes, coaching each rep toward reliable commits and faster closes. As it matured, and acquired new companies, it added Gong Forecast to improve pipeline management and get forecast accuracy to 90%. Read on to see what you can borrow from Piano’s push toward revenue excellence. Delivering precise revenue forecasts Before Gong, pipeline info was everywhere: in Salesforce, spreadsheets, Google Drive, Slack — even on literal napkins! If Piano’s lean revenue team was going to ‘work smarter, not harder,’ Peter needed technology to increase revenue predictability and speed up deal-making. Today, Piano’s CRO and sales leadership team use the Gong Revenue Intelligence platform to track plan performance and lead weekly forecast calls with zero prep time. Everyone on the call operates from a single screen providing efficiency and transparency. No matter who logs in, they see the same numbers for ‘closed’ or ‘commit’. The group leverages AI-driven insights like Deal Likelihood Scores and Deal Warnings to dive straight into forecast risks. They decide exactly where to focus their efforts to ensure deals close. It’s easy to present a clear, defensible forecast to the CEO or the board, even at a moment’s notice. Before Gong Forecast, quarterly revenue projections could vary by millions, causing significant decision-making hurdles. Now, Piano is at 90% forecast accuracy. “The progress we’ve seen from what the CRM, sales managers, and even the CRO used to tell us was going to land is astronomical. We’ve closed the gap by millions. With Gong, our end-of-quarter forecasts are solid.” – Peter Lastowski, VP of Revenue Operations at Piano Driving better GTM decisions with customer interaction data For Peter, streamlined workflows were essential. He wanted a platform to match Piano’s own robust AI capabilities and innovation — one that people would love to use every single day. Piano first applied Gong to its sales workflows by capturing every customer interaction. Then, it used Gong Revenue AI to understand customer and rep behavior from data points across systems like Salesforce, email, and calendars. Immediately, Gong’s guidance ensured reps and managers stayed on message and improved their win rates — they loved it. By flagging deal risks, Gong insights helped the revenue team better manage its pipeline. It got much clearer on the numbers it could commit each month, and forecast accuracy significantly improved. “Gong brought data cleanliness to our entire pipeline. When everyone started living in Gong and managing activities right from the Deal Board, it brought us an amazing level of visibility and accountability.” Gong enables global revenue workflows and collaboration Gong’s influence spread fast. Marketing started using Gong for market insights and showing pipeline gaps for specific segments. This clarity allowed it to shift tactics and messaging to stay on target. Gong was more than a tool, it became a platform to power critical revenue workflows and collaboration at every level. A year into partnering with Gong, Piano welcomed a new CFO, igniting a drive for greater precision in forecasting new business. Given the team’s comfort with Gong’s customer insights, Gong Forecast was a natural add-on for more predictive capabilities. “What’s most exciting about Gong — and what I can’t get anywhere else — is the combination of Forecast with all the other guidance Gong offers us. Ingrained in the forecast are all the deal updates we’ve made based on Gong’s suggestions and prompts around risk. This means I can trust it. It’s all pulled together intelligently into one source.” When Peter assessed implementation time, he said it was a no-brainer. While other solutions could have taken six months, Gong Forecast was up and running in less than a week! The rapid setup and ease of use for reps allowed Piano to dive straight into optimizing forecasts instead of onboarding software. Using data to deliver even more value and scale Piano’s transformation is remarkable. Gong Forecast reclaims five hours weekly for the RevOps team. With streamlined workflows, it has shifted focus from reconciling numbers to driving impactful strategies across the business. Peter directs his saved time towards future planning and refining RevOps workflows for amplified value. He’s excited for Piano’s future and we’re thrilled about its trajectory too. With Gong’s mounting AI capabilities to predict revenue more accurately, Peter expects Gong will give Piano even greater predictive insights in the coming months and years—all fueling its ability to scale. Gong is driving continuous revenue optimization, ensuring a successful future—a journey we’ll proudly follow. 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 Business Financing Leader Funding Circle Credits Gong With More Successful Customer Interactions Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives Global Business Financing How Elsevier lands 45% larger deals using Gong across its NOAM sales team Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Global Business Services How the Customer Success Team at Momentive used Gong to shape high-quality customer conversations Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives North America Software

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

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

BairesDev is 7x more productive at strategic decision-making with Gong. Coaching Deal Execution Enterprise Global Software 7x more efficient reporting The challenge Having insights related to its prospects’ objections, customer satisfaction, inefficiencies, the competitive landscape, market trends, and more is critical for BairesDev’s growth and longevity. Finding these meant wading through a sea of disconnected Zoom recordings, Google Sheets, and dashboards — a manual, weeks-long process. It was impossible to deliver real-time guidance to reps and client services. It was also impossible to quickly respond to shifts in the market. The outcome BairesDev responds to market insights in record time. Gong is helping drive efficiency, revenue growth, and better decisions. It makes constant tweaks to onboarding, training, and sales processes. Ops leaders and customer-facing teams now see keyword trends and outliers daily in one place. They know what top performers do better and how to nudge others toward the same results. Experiencing Gong’s value, BairesDev now uses it for innovative use cases in areas like talent acquisition and sourcing venture capital partners. headquarters San Francisco, CA founded 2009 company size 3,000+ industry IT Services and Consulting If you’re a senior leader in revenue operations, your brain is always running scenarios. You’re constantly considering how to grow revenue with existing customers while locking in new ones. Monika Owczarek is the VP of Strategic Sales Processes at BairesDev and she’s just like you. “My job is to look across the entire business to drive growth. Gong is an essential part of that by helping us understand the interactions we’re having with leads and clients.” See if you can steal a page out of BairesDev’s RevOps playbook. Innovative tech companies need cutting-edge systems BairesDev is a global software development and staffing company with over 4,000 engineers in 50+ countries. It matches software developers with clients all over the world and supplies the top 1% of tech talent in the Americas. But it couldn’t get automated data-backed insights from all its customer interactions, in one platform. With more clarity around a prospect’s unique pain points and objections, it suspected it could significantly improve win rates. Similarly, it felt that automating analysis of calls with existing customers would reveal opportunities to improve quality and therefore, drive better retention and growth. It wasn’t wrong. Choosing to always be at the front of the AI wave Like everyone, these days Monika is paying close attention to what’s happening with AI. She knows it will help BairesDev solve challenges in ways it can’t even predict right now. Part of her company’s competitive advantage will come from adopting and experimenting with the new tech. So, when Monika decided to bring on revenue intelligence software, it had to be with a company that’s always been AI-first. BairesDev chose Gong for its powerful automation, AI models, and exceptional support. As the industry leader in revenue intelligence, Monika says BairesDev felt Gong would always be ahead of the rest. “Gong is at the forefront of AI development. It’s innovating and adapting the product and capabilities to fit the needs of different businesses. We know this will shape our processes and define how we operate in the future.” Mountains of manual reporting? Gone with Gong BairesDev’s sales and client services teams were the first to praise Gong’s benefits. Before adopting Gong, leaders manually reviewed transcripts from Zoom calls to uncover business insights. This was hugely time-consuming which meant sometimes, other priorities took over. Moreover, each leader’s distinct approach meant that gauging team performance and sizing market opportunities lacked consistency. Monika credits Gong with helping to more accurately predict revenue by capturing comprehensive insights in an automated way. Gong also reveals what BairesDev’s top performers do differently. Every week it finds trends in calls by team and by rep. These shape the types of training it delivers and how it adapts to market forces. “The data from Gong helps us make strategic decisions about our processes, our people, and how to adapt to the marketplace. We now see trends and what’s happening in the economy as a whole in terms of what’s important to our clients or our prospects and then being able to react based on that information.” Thanks to Gong’s rich, unified data, BairesDev’s revenue team is 7x more efficient with reporting. Better handoffs mean better client retention and growth One of the more impactful outcomes of BairesDev using Gong is the customer interaction dataset that supports cross-team visibility, collaboration, and alignment. Why? A pivotal moment in a customer’s journey is when they transition from sales to client services. Built over many conversations, sales intimately understands the customer’s unique situation — their pains, fears, and goals. It’s easy for this understanding to get lost during a handoff. Not anymore. Gong’s generative AI gives everyone understanding of customer context with at-a-glance summaries in every conversation. Teams can start acting on critical insights from customer interactions right away. Monika says sales and client services are working more closely together and the result is clear! BairesDev proves the benefit of using Gong across their business. By replacing manual effort with automation using Gong and gaining 7x the speed of finding insights, BairesDev started asking “where else can we use this software?” It quickly applied Gong’s power in unexpected ways. Now, it’s proving that you can even use Gong to hire your next superstar. Today, BairesDev’s talent acquisition specialists rely on Gong to unearth valuable insights from interview calls with potential employees. Gong has helped them drive consistency in interview quality to create a better quality hiring experience. In its venture capital arm, Gong delivers AI-driven insights to improve investment outcomes. For example, Gong captures interactions with potential partners and provides insights into the quality of conversations, leading to informed decision-making, faster due diligence, risk mitigation, and improved portfolio management. What a win! Once you have Gong, you’ll unleash its power across every facet of your business too. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one How Gong empowers Clearbit to be more proactive around customer needs Small Business Coaching Deal Execution North America Software How Hive’s Revenue Strategy Evolved to Achieve 30% Growth in Pipeline Opportunities With Gong Small Business Engage North America Software How Tinuiti Used Gong to Close 50% More Recurring Revenue from Cross-selling Small Business Coaching Strategic Initiatives North America Software

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

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

How Temp Staffing Firm Kelly Services Got a 36% Lift in Placement Rates and 50% Faster Ramp Coaching Deal Execution Enterprise Global Staffing & Recruiting 50% Decrease in ramp time The challenge The surge in remote work put Kelly Services’s people-oriented approach in jeopardy. It needed a solution that could reconnect its internal teams around advanced insights for coaching and onboarding and provide them with a unified view of buyers’ accounts so customer journeys (and sales) remained strong. The outcome Thanks to Gong, Kelly Services ramped up its self- and manager-led coaching. This resulted in 50% faster ramp times and a 36% lift in the number of placements made with customers. headquarters Troy, Michigan founded 1946 company size 10,000+ industry Staffing & Recruiting “Everyone is competing for the same talent. We need to stand out.” That’s not a throwaway statement from Brad Sibbald, Senior Vice President, Science Domain Leader at Kelly Services, a global leader in HR and staffing services. He means it. The HR and staffing industry has faced seismic shifts in recent years: 2x more jobs than talent available, increased competition across the 25,000 staffing and HR firms in the US, and a move to remote work. All three changes impacted Kelly Services, but the move to more digital interactions affected the team the most. It had the potential to really disrupt their organizational effectiveness, particularly where pipeline management was concerned. That’s because it happened at a time when the industry was moving from having an influx of business to requiring highly polished sales skills to win new clients. If Kelly Services was going to stand out from the competition, its leaders know they’d need to focus on upskilling talent and retraining sales skills based on the current market and macro economic state. And they’d need to do it while facing increased pressure to find efficiency gains and win business faster. That’s why Kelly Services went all in on Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform — to lean into better, more connected insights and more unified selling. Gong provided actionable insights to grow pipeline and drive higher margins Gong’s AI-powered insights transformed how Kelly Services managed their pipeline. The team even called it their “Sales Excellence Platform” for the noticeable change in selling behavior it created. Reps began to source and develop pipeline around higher margin services and products. Initially, Kelly Services used a Gong Smart Tracker to better understand how well (and frequently) reps were pushing for conversations to open the door to “higher authority” people. The data didn’t lie — the behavior wasn’t happening as often as expected. This insight helped inform a need for more coaching on multi-threading (i.e., connecting with multiple people inside the buyer’s organization to help drive the deal). It worked and eventually led to more growth with high-margin services. The move to Gong also helped Kelly Services leaders gain more real-time visibility into deals in flight. Kelly Services had long used the industry standard of a CRM backend coupled with an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) database. Gong’s front-end technology helped separate Kelly Services from the rest of the crowd. John Giseburt, VP of Strategic Enablement, said, “We needed to upscale our sales team … we needed the visibility to ‘watch’ them talk.” Pre-Gong, Kelly Services used “old” sales coaching, i.e., role-playing. “Gong flipped role-play into ‘real’ play. We have actual game tape to review now,” said Brad. While slightly skeptical initially, sellers quickly went all in on Gong as they began reviewing their own game tape. Suddenly, a lot of introspection was happening. Sellers also reviewed their peers’ game tapes and started mimicking the top reps, incorporating valuable moves into their conversations. Increased efficiency: 50% faster ramp and 36% higher placement rates John said it best: “With Gong, we’ve seen a 36% lift in fill rate, with shorter times to close. That means we’re placing more talent in our accounts and creating a better experience for our customers.” This resulted from using Gong’s platform to manage pipeline more efficiently. For example, with increased visibility into customer interactions across every account, sales leaders know exactly who each rep is talking to, about what, and when, and whether they’ve discussed the right topics. Having this information across multiple sales reps in different territories who are all selling into the same account means both reps and managers are better able to collaborate without relying on subjective or biased notes in the CRM. Sales leaders were also better able to track how much pipeline was at risk because of poor qualification. If reps aren’t asking the right qualifying questions, leaders are able to identify how and when to de-risk, before it becomes too late. In a rapidly changing industry, this meant Kelly Services could overcome critical shifts and set their revenue teams up for success to stand out from the competition. Moreover, with key information available to everyone in one place, there was less friction during internal knowledge transfers. That helped teams move clients more smoothly between delivery and sales. The tighter candidate experience meant a faster time to close. Recruiters also used Gong to accelerate the intake process, which took at least one or two hours off both the reps’ and recruiters’ calendars. Gong helps recruiters better differentiate between roles, write better job descriptions, and sell candidates into those roles. (And analyze and understand their losses if there are any.) These same capabilities in Gong also contributed to a 50% faster ramp time for new reps. Before Gong, getting new hires — with no previous knowledge of the staffing industry and limited technical knowledge — up to speed took at least six months. Gong’s insights cut that time in half. Today, new reps, “know how to effectively do their job, how to speak their clients’ language, and how to talk to them about their job specification needs in under 90 days to close business sooner.” Reps are also receiving up-to-date information about what works on calls, so they can incorporate those winning moves into their processes. The connectedness and ease with which information is now shared benefits internal teams as well as the customers they serve. Pay it forward: Advice for other industry leaders The team at Kelly Services is thrilled with Gong. The leadership team is certainly reaping the benefits of advanced visibility into its pipeline and AI-backed insights into what goes on in customer interactions. Gong’s consolidated platform keeps everyone up to date on what’s working, which makes it easier to achieve consistently positive behaviors. (This consolidated approach is also very helpful in terms of business continuity and creating an accurate database of every client interaction.) Whether it’s on their own or with support from a manager, employees are tapping into Gong’s AI-backed insights to onboard faster and hit higher fill rates. The team is excited to expand its use cases for Gong while focusing on the people-centered approach at the core of the company’s mission. As a fully-fledged Gong user, Brad had some words of wisdom for other industry leaders: “Get comfortable with this new technology. Embrace it, and take advantage of the AI workflows. Just remember, you still need to be personal and have a human touch.” As John said, “Don’t underestimate your team, your culture. Some of our earliest detractors of Gong are now its biggest advocates. Once they ‘saw the light,’ they went all in.” Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one Winning what’s next: Global capital market research firm PitchBook is 10x more efficient with Gong Enterprise Coaching Global Software Absorb Software sees 30% revenue boost by adopting gen AI for productivity gains and improving buyer experience Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Education The Gong GOATs: How Demandbase grew its market presence and hiked win rates Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution North America Software

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

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

Winning what’s next: Global capital market research firm PitchBook is 10x more efficient with Gong Coaching Enterprise Global Software The challenge PitchBook wanted to enhance its vast onboarding and training processes and gain real-time insights into its team performance and customer interactions. The outcome PitchBook’s customer success, account management, sales, product and revenue teams use Gong’s AI to power critical workflows and gain visibility into customer needs, information, and feedback to assess opportunities in the market. They also use Gong to provide new reps with best-in-class training and reduce onboarding by hours. HEADQUARTERS Seattle, Washington FOUNDED 2007 company size 4,000+ industry Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals PitchBook is a global enterprise with nearly 4,000 team members located across nine offices including Seattle, London, and Singapore. The company has nearly 1,000 reps globally across its sales, customer success, account management and support teams. As the leading resource for comprehensive data, research, and insights on global capital markets, the company turns to thousands of their client and prospect interactions to understand client needs, and inform its product roadmap. Paul Santarelli is the Chief Sales Officer at PitchBook. Needless to say, their industry is intricate and PitchBook products are profoundly sophisticated. With that in mind, Paul has leaned into providing his team with a quota-defying, AI-backed resource. It had to be one that could power critical workflows and drive efficient pipeline management, as well as ensure speedy and reliable decision-making. Paul identified three challenges to address: Legacy sales processes: Reps would book significant amounts of time to shadow calls, with no guarantee a client would show up. Inconsistent intel on outcomes and opportunities to adapt: Leaders needed timely information on what worked, what didn’t, and precisely where reps needed additional support. Centralized access to customer and market insights: The revenue teams needed an integrated platform where everyone could access critical business insights and build better product features. Gong makes PitchBook’s sales processes 10x more efficient Gong has helped transform PitchBook’s sales process into a well-oiled, high-performing machine. With help from Gong’s AI, everyone saves time. Reps spend less time trying to recall what they’ve communicated in the past and managers provide more timely and valuable feedback. Using Gong’s Trackers, managers are able to uncover coachable moments in mere minutes. It’s a 10x time saving that brings more efficiency and value to the sales process. There’s been an uptick in coaching and learning opportunities for both managers and reps. PitchBook estimates the time saved by Gong’s impactful workflows to be in the “hundreds, if not thousands,” of hours for managers and individual reps. Rather than hunting for hours for a “coachable moment,” managers can find one quickly and bring it into their training programs, 1:1s, and team meetings, or share it immediately with one person or the whole team using Call Snippets. “With Gong, we have real-time data at our fingertips.” That data comes from Gong Trackers, which provide advanced visibility into customer interactions with sellers and a valuable and scalable business process that is powered by external feedback: Reps rely on Trackers instead of spending hours of time listening to calls. Managers can provide strategic guidance to all their reps in less than an hour. The ability to call out best practices has also bolstered the speed and effectiveness of onboarding new hires. PitchBook leverages the voice of the market and customer through Gong In Paul’s words, “If you are not continuously learning about the industry, the market, or the product, key data insights will pass you by.” Gong’s industry-leading AI has helped PitchBook take a massive amount of unstructured information and turn it into highly actionable insights for sales, product, data, and research teams. “With help from Gong’s Trackers and insights into conversational data, we better understand our clients and prospects,” says Paul. “Gong insights help us learn, train our reps, and — most importantly — provide a better service to our customers and prospects. Working with Gong gives me confidence that we will succeed.” But it’s not just Paul and his sales team seeing the value in Gong’s integrated platform and powerful workflows. Quick adoption leads to immediate time savings and growth PitchBook also uses Gong to help share best-practice knowledge across the entire revenue organization, and it’s particularly useful when onboarding and training new sales and support reps. Adoption has been quick and extensive. Today, over 90% of the revenue team uses Gong in some way. Spreading best-practice knowledge both quickly and efficiently is essential to Brett Kaluza, the Chief Customer Officer at PitchBook. Responsible for account management, customer success, and support teams, Brett’s priorities are driving business and creating long-term value for customers. Creating, managing, and converting pipeline while also exceeding customers expectations has been easier since implementing Gong. “Gong was quick to implement, is easy to use and provides instant access to valuable information,” shared Brett. At peak hiring times, PitchBook may have 20-30 people starting monthly. Gong cuts 3-5 hours from each person’s onboarding process, saving up to 150 hours per month that would otherwise be spent trying to find best-in-class calls to review. “Gong has helped us take actionable, data-driven steps to transform our onboarding and scaling processes,” says Brett. It’s exactly what his team needed to drive their most valuable business workflows. Gong is helping PitchBook scale its business globally PitchBook supports customers all over the world. Gong’s AI capabilities are integral to exceeding customer needs around the globe, as Gong records conversations in 30+ languages. This multilingual ability means PitchBook can point the right employees to the right conversations (and vice versa) in their local language. Gong also allows Brett and his team to easily curate top-notch content for onboarding new employees in their rapidly growing Singapore office. The revenue intelligence platform is built to help enterprise-grade companies scale rapidly, and customize roll-outs to be more suitable local markets. Brett sees Gong as essential to PitchBook both today and in the future as they continue to scale globally. The Gong partnership provides PitchBook with a wealth of information about what works and what doesn’t, so the team can transform their most critical workflows. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. 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 How SoftServe Used Gong to Adapt and Align Their Teams Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution North America Software Canva’s 6% revenue boost: How using Gong transformed their strategy Enterprise Deal Execution Engage Forecast Asia-Pacific Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software

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The future of Fintech: Nasdaq uses Gong to make bullish bets

Hannah Hapin — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 17:25:02 +0000

The future of Fintech: Nasdaq uses Gong to make bullish bets Coaching Deal Execution Enterprise Global Financial Services The challenge Before Gong, Nasdaq leaders had narrow visibility into what was happening across their business, and were in search of a way to access data to make better-informed decisions. Forecasting was difficult, and there wasn’t a consistent way for managers to give reps feedback, so coaching was time-consuming. The outcome With Gong, Nasdaq now uses a single platform to make data-driven decisions, forecast accurately, and provide effective coaching. They’ve created efficiencies across teams, bringing the voice of the customer into everything they do, ultimately driving better business results for both Nasdaq and its thousands of customers globally. Headquarters New York, New York founded 1971 company size 5,000+ industry Financial Services Sitting at the intersection of technology and financial markets, Nasdaq is in a league all its own. It’s one of the three most-followed stock market indices in the United States, with more than 5,000 employees distributed across the globe, and more than 4,000 of the world’s most innovative companies listed on its exchange. But its corporate services are lesser known to the public. Those services focus on helping more than 10,000 companies with investor relations and environmental, social and governance (ESG) frameworks. “Historically, Nasdaq was much more of a product company,” said Jeff Thomas, EVP of Nasdaq’s Corporate Platforms Group. “We’re transitioning into a more customer-centric company that better understands our clients’ challenges and can serve their needs.” To achieve a more customer-centric culture and drive growth, Nasdaq needed a solution that would both improve organizational effectiveness and surface customer insights quickly. With Gong’s proprietary AI, the team leveraged customer interactions to create more predictable pipeline strategies and ultimately close more deals across their varied product portfolio. Rally your productivity using customer insights Jeff Thomas and Chris Cordani, VP of Sales, led the strategic shift to better-informed, customer-focused decisions. Before adopting Gong, their teams relied on opinionated and partial data in the CRM, and often made assumptions that negatively affected their business decisions. “Before Gong, we relied on what our reps told us. It was like a game of telephone. Reps would repeat what they thought they heard from a customer, and they would write notes in our CRM. Today, we identify sound bites and share them across the team, making sure everybody’s on the same page and able to optimize for exactly what customers ask for. That helps us with our business efficiency.” ~ Jeff Thomas Gong’s ability to understand customer interactions means it captures accurate information, surfaces insights gleaned from that information, and makes it accessible to everyone. The revenue team understands what works and the product team innovates with customers’ needs first. “You’ve got the client success team. You’ve got the new sales team. You’ve got the product team. Who’s at the center? The client. Now you’ve got technology like Gong stitching it all together, resulting in more informed decision making.” -Chris Cordani The ability to share Gong’s insights has had a profound influence on business decisions and growth. “It’s really helped the customer voice become paramount in our decision making,” said Cordani. “We have thousands of different clients around the world with different needs. Gong helps us figure out which features and benefits are really going to drive increased client stickiness and expansion of opportunity.” In an economic downturn, a new emphasis on both informed decision making and productivity have taken center stage. Nasdaq now uses Gong’s Smart Trackers so leaders get specific, real-time alerts about trends in their most important strategic initiatives, a far cry from the previously inefficient requests to join calls. And managers now have a consistent way to give reps feedback.“Gong is a powerful solution that helps me develop my team to be more successful in a challenging market.” -Chris Cordani Create reliable forecasts in an evolving market Without accurate data, forecasting for a global team was a high-stakes chore. Gong’s AI engine now captures Nasdaq’s customer interaction data. Then, based on the industry’s most comprehensive dataset of sales interactions, Gong analyzes Nasdaq’s data and provides insights so the team can craft more accurate forecasts. That’s a critical capability in today’s fluctuating market. “Gong gives me more confidence in the forecast we put forward on a monthly and quarterly basis,” said Thomas. “Gong gives me that peace of mind.” A confident, data-backed forecast helps internal stakeholders take action using Gong’s smart guidance, and having Gong automatically update customer insights in real time makes all the difference. “As someone leading a global business with sellers around the world, Gong helps me control the message we put into the market and the value we create for our clients in an effective way,” said Thomas. Nasdaq thrives with Gong’s AI-driven insights As a platform, Gong brings layers of value to Nasdaq. Since it adopted Gong, Nasdaq has ramped its inter- and intra-team alignment by sharing critical insights across global teams — from the revenue organization to product development. Those teams now have access to the AI-backed data insights they need to make purpose-driven decisions, forecast accurately, and coach and train reps to close deals faster. This improvement in their teams’ efficiency has resulted in stronger revenue growth. “Gong has really changed the way we run our sales team,” says Thomas. “It helps us understand what works and where we can improve, and really helps our reps level-up faster.” As they continue their customer-centric journey, Nasdaq is focused on delivering better solutions to clients. “We’re able to challenge ourselves to be better partners and to write a better future for everyone,” said Cordani. 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 TIBCO has Mastered the Art of Closing Huge Deals Faster, Thanks to Gong Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software How Gong enables sales leaders at GoTo to coach at scale Enterprise Coaching North America Software Shopify Creates a Learning Environment For Their Sales Team Enterprise Coaching Software

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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 Hello, new reality: How Gong helps Apptio keep their field sales team engaged Small Business Coaching Deal Execution North America Software Watch Appen use Gong to onboard CSMs 4 months faster Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Asia-Pacific North America Business Services Winning what’s next: Global capital market research firm PitchBook is 10x more efficient with Gong Enterprise Coaching Global Software

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Business Financing Leader Funding Circle Credits Gong With More Successful Customer Interactions

Hannah Hapin — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 20:21:28 +0000

Business Financing Leader Funding Circle Credits Gong With More Successful Customer Interactions Coaching Strategic Initiatives Enterprise Global Business Financing The challenge Funding Circle wanted a platform that would identify key trends and risks inside its customer interactions. They also wanted to be able to test new initiatives and coach employees on best practices so they could guarantee quality as well as compliance with internal policies and procedures. The outcome Using the Gong platform’s advanced AI capabilities, Funding Circle vastly improved the quality of its coaching and its understanding of market trends. It also transformed its business efficiency and compliance by using faster and more effective testing and monitoring. HEadquarters London, England founded 2010 company size 1000+ Industry Business Financing In a win for business financing leaders everywhere, Funding Circle got more than they bargained for from Gong. They’re ready to share how they did it. Founded in 2010, Funding Circle originally operated as a peer-to-peer marketplace. It’s now one of the largest online platforms for small business loans in the world, having helped 130,000+ businesses borrow more than £14.5 B (~$18B USD). Peter Lindeman, Head of Quality Assurance and Control at Funding Circle, runs a team that’s responsible for ensuring that customers are treated fairly and in compliance with the company’s agreed policies, procedures, and regulatory requirements. When he first approached Gong, his focus was on improving the quality of customer calls and compliance using coaching. He wanted managers to have advanced visibility into customer interactions so they could improve their quality assurance (QA), compliance, and messaging initiatives through coaching. Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform was a perfect fit for the needs of this highly regulated, global, business financing powerhouse. A focus on QA, coaching, and customer insights leads to real-time agility and understanding the daily challenges our customers face. Funding Circle had tried other solutions, but it was hard to customize and update their tracking features in line with the company’s real-time requirements. Business financing is subject to the whims of global market systems that can turn quickly based on political and world events. Lindeman needed a solution that would keep his team one step ahead of the market. Gong was the right solution. Gong’s versatile keyword trackers were a step in the right direction. Funding Circle now monitors keywords in real time inside customer interactions, and updates those trackers with ease in just a few clicks. This enables Funding Circle managers to spot emerging market trends as they happen and tailor their coaching accordingly. Funding Circle has gone even further by using Gong’s proprietary AI-powered Smart Trackers. This allows them to track key concepts, no matter how they’re phrased, and enables them to track emerging trends and gain a fuller understanding of the daily challenges their customers face, and respond accordingly. With Gong’s insights, managers can easily recognize the best practices happening on calls — like behaviors or talk tracks — and replicate them across a team. They’re also able to track whether agents are in compliance with the policies and procedures that guide customer interactions in business finance. These steps have been major wins for quality improvement and real-time agility on Funding Circle’s frontline teams. New message testing is faster and more effective Once they realized the extent of Gong’s AI-backed capabilities, Funding Circle incorporated Gong more deeply into their monitoring and testing (M&T) program. This allows them to make well-informed decisions from day one with respect to new messaging roll outs. They can also ensure that regulatory requirements, policies, procedures, and best practices are followed. Relying on keyword trackers enables the team to take on increased levels of M&T. “We saw Gong’s larger value when we realized we could use the platform for coaching and for monitoring and testing our latest test scripts,” said Peter Lindeman. The team now runs faster testing for new talk tracks because the tracking and evaluation functions are automated in Gong. It takes fewer resources to run higher-quality testing, saving the company both time and money. Gong also helps the team ensure that Funding Circle’s new messaging initiatives are agile, and that compliance on new selling scripts is monitored. (The latter is a critical component of rollouts in business finance, as well as many other heavily regulated sectors.) As Lindeman said, “Having increasingly automated M&T processes means we’re able to pick up a wider scope of testing and highlight emerging areas of risk and, furthermore, with less resource” Gong’s insights enable everyone with a hand in the rollout to pivot quickly and ensure its success. Visibility into market trends enables customer-friendly responses Lindeman noted that one of Funding Circle’s enduring challenges (as with other businesses) was a lack of clear visibility into key market trends and emerging risks from specifically, an overall customer’s perspective. With Gong’s advanced visibility, Lindeman’s team now analyzes customer interactions at scale to highlight key market trends and emerging risks it might otherwise miss. For example, they identify the micro- and macro-economic obstacles that borrowers regularly mention. The company periodically reviews this interaction-based data as part of its customer insights reporting (CIR). It’s incredibly useful in increasing the company’s responsiveness to changing market dynamics, and lets them make smart business decisions that address their customers’ stated needs. Gong bankrolls success across the global company Funding Circle’s Quality Assurance and Control team now use Gong’s data and analytical capabilities to keep key stakeholders within the business up to date on insights into customer interactions. This allows the teams to remain agile in the face of market trends and ensure the top-shelf quality their customers expect during interactions with a global business financing leader. Lindeman’s team regularly learns about new ways to use Gong’s AI-backed capabilities to extract more information from their customer interactions. Where they once needed to improve the quality of their calls, compliance, and coaching, they are now positioned to tackle broader market issues affecting the business. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? 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