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

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

A Clearer Shot: How I Used Customer Insights to Make Better Decisions at Indeed Coaching Strategic Initiatives Enterprise Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Media & Internet The challenge Before Gong, Indeed depended on anecdotal evidence from interviews with individual sales reps to inform their decisions which was not always accurate and took some additional time and resources. The outcome With Gong, Indeed was now able to gather data from multiple interactions, which saved the team time and resources. They were now able to quickly test their messaging and refine their training and rollout processes. Headquarters Austin, Texas founded 2004 customer size 17,000+ industry Technology, Information and Internet Written by Nate Davison, Sales & CS Training and Enablement Manager @ Indeed Perspective matters. In business as in life, it’s easy to see things the way you want to see them. It’s much harder to go into a situation thinking, “How can I approach things differently this time?” Yet, your ability to shift your perspective can directly influence your ability to make good decisions. Take photography, for example. Photography is a great way to literally see something through a different lens. Getting a drone as a gift allowed me to get into aerial photography, which is an ideal way to take something I see every day and turn it on its head. It enabled me to choose new points of view for my photographs and take more interesting pictures. When I take an aerial photo of a beach, for example, I notice striking lines and patterns that I don’t see when I stand on that same beach, even if I’m there every day. I do my best to apply that same philosophy at work. I’ve been at Indeed for nine years and was the first external hire on their learning and development (L&D) team. I know it’s a cliché within the L&D space, but I love helping, mentoring, and coaching people. It means everything to me to see that lightbulb moment when a person understands something from a new perspective for the first time. I fell into L&D by accident, but when I came to Indeed, I bought into the company’s mission, leadership, and global impact. It’s been amazing to see my team grow and shift, but sometimes it’s hard to determine the best way forward. That’s where it’s helpful to look at things from a different angle using technology. I had a chance to do this using Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform, when we launched a strategic initiative across our global teams. Measurement and tracking are a must for sales training In 2020, Indeed launched a new core sales and support methodology focused on understanding the customers’ needs so we could better address them. Since Indeed is a global company, we had to manage a worldwide rollout of the new messaging across various cultures, customs, and languages. We trained thousands of people around the world using this new sales and support methodology, but we needed better data to know whether we were doing a good job. How else could we make good decisions about whether to tweak the current training or our future rollouts? We could see, for example, that some markets were doing well, but we couldn’t definitively say this success was down to our new approach — or if it was despite our recent training. Any evidence was anecdotal or on a small scale. We lacked reliable insight into our customer interactions. Every company needs to connect its efforts with its results so it can decide how to move forward. We had built a great company, but we didn’t have a way to analyze how our initiatives landed in the field or tech that could connect our efforts to our sales and customer lifecycle results. We couldn’t determine a path forward based on our past work. That was a clarifying realization for us.Several of our managers insisted we needed an intelligence platform to give us greater visibility into how our messaging landed, and dozens of us participated in the selection process. Opening Our Sales Training Process to New Possibilities One of the things we found appealing about Gong was its 120+ integrations with other platforms, like Salesforce. Many tools offer great integrations, but Gong has the best reputation among them. Indeed is an industry leader, and working with a startup comes with a lot of uncertainty. We wanted to align ourselves with a company that similarly leads in its category, and Gong is synonymous with revenue intelligence and customer interaction analytics. Its AI-backed analytics capabilities were a massive win for us. My VP has a great mind for decision-making and is always saying, “Show me the numbers.” Gong offered both native analytics and the ability to connect those analytics to other platforms, such as Tableau. When we chose Gong, we chose integrated data (and organizational alignment around that data). We were all going to be able to make decisions based on a consistent view of what happened in our messaging initiatives and subsequent customer interactions. It’s funny how one change can open a world of possibilities. We adopted Gong and immediately uncovered several wins related to our training. Before Gong, we used anecdotal evidence from interviews with individual sales reps to make decisions about whether we needed to create additional support. Using Gong allowed us to gather data from multiple interactions, which affirmed that our new methodology helped teams get our customers closer to their hire. No additional support was needed; our training worked. Take a “win or learn” approach to conversations: Either win using an existing process or learn something to make it better. We also learned that some of our most valuable people weren’t using the new messaging. That’s not to say they weren’t successful — in many cases, they were. But we now had an opportunity to ask what drove this misalignment with our new messaging. That helped us tweak and refine our training and rollout processes.I think of this as a “win or learn” approach to conversations: Either we win using our existing process or we learn something new and make it better. Gong has given us the insights we need into what works, who does it best, and how we might adapt our approach before, during, and after strategic messaging initiatives. A New Way to Measure and Refine Behavioral Change Early in the rollout process, we started using keyword trackers for words and phrases we expected people to say in each phase. This straightforward (and highly accurate) tracking was a big help in getting everyone used to the platform and the insights it delivers with ease. We quickly moved on to flex our Gong muscles and dig into numerous critical elements of our processes. Scorecards, for example, allow us to identify areas of strengths and weakness in calls. We set expectations early that leaders should listen to and score at least one call per rep every week against preset criteria. It’s really improved the effectiveness of their coaching. The Points of Interest panel gives reps everything they need to know at a glance. They no longer have to take as many notes during customer conversations, as they can just go to the Points of Interest panel to see action items, questions asked, and more. It means they can pay more attention to our customers during calls. The Conversations tab is a great jumping-off point to drill down into interactions. We started with some basic filters, but now we’re adding complexity to get even more granular about steering teams in the right direction. Deal Boards allow our leaders to pull up helpful searches, learning objectives that use “what’s in it for me?” statements, and recommendations based on Gong’s predictive capabilities. These boards are often the basis for their decision-making. As expected, the Salesforce integration has been incredibly useful for us, as has the ability to aggregate interactions with a particular customer in one place. Integrated data gives us a more accurate view of our initiatives as they happen, so we can make smart business decisions on the fly. We’ve also changed the structure of our follow-ups using the Deals tab. We can immediately see if there’s a customer who’s changed their spend and a rep who hasn’t called them. By connecting the dots across interactions, reps (and managers) can ensure that no deals fall through the cracks. Many people who weren’t part of the Gong selection process have become big fans of the platform. Our head of marketing mentions Gong in every forum, saying things like, “I realized there are some big opportunities to improve this product based on what I saw in Gong.” Enhanced visibility into customer interactions gives L&D teams insight into what works well, who does it best, and how the company can evolve its approach. I also see the potential to embed Gong in the entire training process as a way to measure behavioral change.. Before training occurs, we can use Gong to outline the necessary learning content and define our objectives. During training, we can use snippets of customer interactions to train our reps on handling those situations. After training, Gong can go well beyond basic measurements of success and provide us with clear assessments of the training’s adoption and how well it worked in terms of our sales and support objectives.It used to be that we could only speculate how our trainees reacted to training and guess what they might have learned. Now we can ask questions that are aligned with the Kirkpatrick Model: What behavioral changes are present or absent? Do those behavioral changes result in increased revenue, product adoption, and meaningful conversations with our clients? It’s an entirely new level of post-training assessment. Analytics That Helped Us Scale We have launched a dozen new versions of our products in the past 18 months, and thanks to Gong, we can now see how product mentions correlate with our launches and sales. You can’t do that with call recordings alone. I knew Indeed was doing incredible things, but when we started using Gong, I saw our efforts through a different lens: that of our customers. We’ve been using their perspective to improve our offerings and it’s clearly working. Our head of products often uses Gong to understand how we can more closely align Indeed’s values with our customers’ needs. We’re constantly using Gong to find specific customer feedback so that we can incorporate make a better experience, and these types of insights give us an opportunity to reframe and reshape our product as well as customer interactions and learn what works best. Today, technology like Gong offers us recommendations and analytics for every customer interaction, every single time, in a matter of seconds. I worked in sales as my first job out of college. I’m an enthusiastic person, and I was genuinely excited to talk to people. But it took me a while to realize that my enthusiasm came across all wrong. Customers interpreted my excitement as being overly “salesy” and were less inclined to trust me. I think about the lessons I learned then from having even a sliver of visibility into calls from audio recordings — a technology that seems so primitive now. Today, in addition to audio, Gong offers us recommendations and analytics based on every customer interaction, in a matter of seconds. Get a new perspective on something familiar I’m an L&D professional, but I’m also a husband and father. If raising kids teaches you anything, it’s to take the time to see things differently so you can chart a good path forward. I’m teaching my young daughter how to fly that drone I mentioned earlier (We named it Zephyr, after the Greek god of the west wind.), and she’s amazed at how different things look from above. She often says, “Daddy, I bet if we looked at this with Zephyr, it would look totally different.” And she’s right.Take the time to consider something familiar, learn from it, and make your decisions based on a new point of view. That new perspective and refreamed decision-making ability is what I get from aerial photography, and it’s what Indeed has found in Gong. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one How Rapid7 secured an increase in win rates using Gong Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software How Highspot Adopted a New Sales Methodology Using Gong Small Business Coaching Strategic Initiatives Software Reality-based forecasts: Faster, smarter, more aligned Small Business Deal Execution North America Software

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

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

How Andela’s enablement team shortened sales cycle times by 33% with Gong Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Small Business North America Media & Internet The challenge Andela already had Gong, but there was an opportunity to further maximize its use. When Andela renewed Gong, the enablement team began to own the platform, which gave them even greater visibility into what they needed and how the team could achieve it. The outcome Through Gong, Andela was able to gain visibility into customer interactions which led to increased efficiency and improved decision-making. They also saw an improvement in rep knowledge, reduced time to ROI, and cut sales cycles by 33%! headquarters New York, New York founded 2014 company size 1,500+ industry IT Services and IT Consulting Written by Kieran Smith, Past Senior Manager of Revenue Enablement @ Andela I spent more than a decade as a sales leader. But the further up the ladder I went, the less fun I had, and the further I moved away from what I loved doing: coaching and developing people. I used to work as a professional football coach (soccer for the North Americans out there), and there are many parallels to coaching people on and off the field. I liked to develop people into their best selves, improve their skills, and even help them with career path mapping. When I transitioned off the pitch into sales, the most rewarding part was constantly revising and reworking sales processes and methodologies to get the best results from my sales reps. While I liked the strategy element of leadership roles, it took me away from people on the frontlines who needed coaching. Coming out of the depths of the pandemic, I made a conscious pivot from sales leadership into sales enablement, and joined the team at Andela.Andela is a global talent marketplace that connects leading organisations with highly skilled technologists in emerging markets. As a Senior Manager of Revenue Enablement, my focus was onboarding and coaching AEs — exactly the stuff I like to do. But first, I had to address several challenges around remotely onboarding a sales team with an ever-evolving sales process. Better visibility was the #1 key to empowering our sales enablement team Ramp times and our time to ROI had room for improvement. Between a newer sales team and shifting sales messaging, our reps struggled to hit the ground running and adapt to changes in the sales process. All of this led to slower sales cycles and knowledge gaps. To get our reps up to speed faster, I needed better visibility into their customer interactions. I needed to tap into Gong. I had bought and implemented Gong at another company, but left before reaping its benefits. Fortunately, Andela already had Gong, but there was an opportunity to further maximise its use. When Andela renewed Gong, I took ownership of the platform. The following month I was promoted to run the enablement team, which gave me even greater visibility into what we needed and how we could achieve it. Gong is much more than a conversation intelligence tool; it’s a Revenue Intelligence Platform. The platform’s value and efficiency come from how it helps leaders analyse customer interactions at scale. For someone in an enablement position who helps drive strategic initiatives, such as new messaging rollouts and price changes, with adoption and coaching, the data and the insights from those interactions are critical. Andela’s sales team had more than doubled during the pandemic, so our onboarding and communications needed to change if we were going to remain efficient. We could no longer rely on sharing anecdotal experiences to inform our strategy. Gong’s true differentiator is empowering teams to harness the voice of the customer by uncovering data and insights that shape how a company moves forward, and that’s what we needed most. Gong revealed and corrected gaps in rep training (with a 188% improvement rate!) In 2022, I listened to 2,238 customer interactions in Gong. The number isn’t as significant as the information that came from that data. I pride myself on understanding the full context of customer interactions: what’s being said and by whom, at what level, and for which segment. Gong gives me what I need to reach that level of understanding so I can plan the next best step. Andela previously had a “ride-along” culture, where managers would sit in on random calls with their sales reps and base their understanding of that rep’s performance on their call behaviour. But of course, people behave differently when their manager is there. The truth happens during interactions when the manager isn’t there. Gong enabled me to learn what happened when managers weren’t in the room. And it revealed a lot about the gaps in our training… One trend I noticed in listening to these calls was that reps passed a number of difficult questions to their manager. That meant reps were rising through the ranks with knowledge gaps.That said, we did some things well — our enterprise team was growing by ~4% week over week — but we also missed some of the basics, like setting agendas. When I asked the manager whether reps were setting agendas, they answered, “Yep.” But Gong revealed that agenda setting happened on only 17% of calls. Managers were shocked, but there was nothing to debate. We did a sprint for two weeks, where we ran through how to set an agenda and set expectations. After the training, agenda setting jumped from 17% to 49%, which is great for such a short time. It’s a 188% increase! Data-backed insights make it easier to separate assumptions from the truth. Sales enablement is a catchall term, but I view myself as an internal strategic advisor. In other words, I have influence without authority. Objective numbers make it easier to assert that influence because it’s hard to argue with what’s there in black and white.Gong provides the data-backed insights that separate assumptions from the truth. It improved our efficiency and our decision-making at the same time. Call Libraries improved rep knowledge, reduced their time to ROI, and cut sales cycles by 33% Once I had a solid understanding of our situation, we revamped our onboarding program to integrate Gong as early as possible. With each new group of hires, we introduced Gong earlier and earlier. One of the first touchpoints is a best-practice Call Library split by segment, role, call type, and element of the call. This makes it easier for new reps to find the exact information they need. Our SDR library, for example, is split into folders for booked meeting calls and prospecting calls. The prospecting folder has six subfolders for each piece of the conversation in the SDR playbook, with call snippets for each element. That might include call openers, insights, permission, insightful questions, objection handling, and closings. Not everybody needs to work on every part of the cold call. Someone might be really good at asking questions, but not so good at objection handling. Gong makes it really easy for our reps to listen to 15 examples of objection handling or 20 examples of how to close a meeting. Whatever they need, whenever they need it.We also implemented a certification for all roles. As part of the preparation for that process, reps need to do a Gong exercise in which they listen to previous certifications and offer feedback. With more exposure to best practices through the Call Libraries, the standards of certification went up, from a score of 3/5 to 4/5 (a 33% increase). And when those reps finished training, they ramped up a lot faster. We cut our ramp time for SDRs by 50%, which is notably good. We also reduced the time to ROI for AEs to 12 weeks, and shortened our sales cycle by 33%. Gong-focused incentive program upleveled managers’ and reps’ coaching skills My dedication to coaching was important, but also led me to a big mistake. I knew the value in developing people, and assumed other leaders did too. I also assumed they knew how to do it well, but I was wrong. Not many people actually get management training. Our sales leadership team was growing quickly to keep pace with the growth of our reps, so it made sense to boost Gong adoption with more tenured team members through the managers. We created a leadership development program focused on sales coaching, and set minimum expectations for managers to review one customer interaction for each rep in Gong and provide a Scorecard and feedback. After that, we encouraged reps to use Gong to listen to their own interactions with customers, as well as those of our top reps. At the sales team’s Monday standup meeting, we introduced a Gong leaderboard that showed the previous week’s stats for SDRs, AEs, and client partners. We started noticing that the people who listened to the most calls were high on the leaderboard, so we augmented the leaderboard with our “Gong Star of the Month” program. Managers would nominate a call each month, and I would choose a winner for each role, with the winners receiving $250 plus some Gong swag. It was a chance for us to celebrate excellent performance and demonstrate our commitment to this platform. Nothing sends salespeople into a flurry more than hearing, “We’re going to do some call coaching,” because it usually means criticism. And I know what it’s like — your manager is critical about one bad decision and you never hear about anything else. Instead, we reverse-engineered a feedback loop by creating a self-reflective Scorecard. We asked reps to tell us two or three things they thought they did well, name where they felt they could improve, and provide suggestions for strategies they might try the next time. Reps submitted their Scorecard and the specific customer interaction for their manager to review in Gong. Then a conversation began between the rep and their manager. We taught our managers how to coach more effectively using Gong as a coaching solution, which led to improvements for the team.I worked with one woman who started her journey near the bottom of the leaderboard. Using this self-reflective feedback, she was soon second from the top. She just needed that interactive feedback process, and Gong helped us deliver it. Clear data made it easy to track the success of training programs for new business lines The world changed while I was at Andela. As everyone went remote, Andela was in high demand, and we had to change our sales approach. We needed to talk about our story, boost engagement, and discover which points now resonated with prospects. We changed our slide deck four times, but we always looked to Gong data to refine our strategy.Andela’s core business involved front-end and back-end engineers. During the pandemic, we strategically started moving into what we called practice areas, for people with more specialised skills. As we introduced these practice areas, we used Gong Trackers to highlight key words. For example, every mention of “data” or “cloud practice” would alert the practice leader to listen to that particular interaction. Trackers were a huge part of Andela’s growth strategy. Using Gong meant we could hone in on growth areas, identify practice gaps, and easily alert practice leads so they could jump in straight away. We also added practice area calls to our Call Library, so sales reps could listen to Salesforce calls before talking to a CRM director, for example. Gong data offers specificity, allowing leaders to be more confident and conscious about how they help individuals and the team as a whole. Over 18 months, I noticed an improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of changes we made to our sales approach. Gong allowed us to create more bespoke, targeted training. Rather than ask a manager what the team needed to work on, we could look at objective stats in Gong to see what needed work. We could develop group training if the entire team scored low on a pain point, or create more targeted training in a particular area if it was warranted. After training, we monitored those areas to determine whether there were improvements. Gong data gives us that specificity, allowing us to be more confident and conscious about how we help individuals and the team. The best coaches (and engineers) use a data-driven approach Whether you’re a world-class football coach or sales leader, you should use data to analyse your performance against your chosen methodology. That analysis informs how you train for the rest of the week, month, and year. Whether you’re working with an athlete who can’t break out of 1:1 coverage or a salesperson who always avoids a pointed question, you have to go beyond “my opinion versus your opinion” and look at the data to see what really happened. Only then can you influence strategy and direction for your team. Embracing insights from customer interactions will enhance every aspect of your sales cycle. Sales is one of the most objective industries there is, because your revenue number is your revenue number. That makes sales ripe for a data-driven approach. The best thing you can do is embrace the data-driven insights Gong generates from your customer interactions. They can enhance every aspect of your sales cycle. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. Request demo Keep exploring stories like this one Gong for BDRs: How Aircall boosted qualified pipeline by 35% in EMEA Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Global Business Services How Gong Forecast is helping Tackle.io shave 40% off forecasting time Small Business Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software ComplyAdvantage uses Gong to decrease ramp time by 50% Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Europe/Middle East/Africa Software

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Shortening the time to success for new sales reps

Hannah Hapin — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 22:46:42 +0000

Shortening the time to success for new sales reps Coaching Small Business North America Media & Internet The challenge As Glacier Media began to transition to virtual work during a time of uncertainty, they lost all visibility into what their employees were working on. The outcome Glacier Media was able to successfully navigate through a time of change and uncertainty by implementing Gong. Gong’s insights and capabilities allowed the org to train, retain, and coach their sales team with data sourced from the true voice of the customer. Headquarters Vancouver, Canada Founded 1988 Employees 1000+ Industry Media & Publishing For me, Gong is more than just a coaching tool. It represents a significant change in process for Glacier Media and demonstrates our commitment to the virtual sales process. Connor Beaty Regional Digital Sales Manager Some people learn by observing. Others learn by doing. In sales, you learn from both. Learning on the job has always been part of the sales process. Reps need time to understand their product inside and out, which then allows them to develop their approach and learn how to build rapport with clients. Historically, this was called “learning on the road”: hopping on calls with other reps, joining meetings with clients, and developing a sales style over time. However, just because it’s always been that way, doesn’t mean it always has to be… I work in advertising, marketing, and media. The media industry is undergoing a transition from traditional advertising methods to a variety of digital marketing tactics that are far more complex to understand and pitch. This transition has had an incredible impact on salespeople in our industry. Regardless of where companies are in their digital evolution, the transition to a digital space is reshaping how new sales teams get off the ground. Glacier Media is in the midst of such a transformation. A Canadian-based business with long roots in the traditional media space, Glacier has since evolved into a national media house with the largest online local news network in the country, as well as a cutting-edge digital marketing agency. I’ve worked at Glacier Media for several years, starting as a sales rep with no prior industry experience. After a year, I was promoted to a sales management role, and spent the next five years managing various sales teams across the company. The traditional sales model at Glacier Media used to look very similar to other companies in the media industry: reps operated primarily in-person, knocking on doors, shaking hands, and handing out business cards, rate cards, and product samples. When it came to rep coaching, Glacier didn’t have much of a formalized structure in place. Managers would occasionally go out on calls with reps, typically jotting down notes here or there or chatting with reps about client needs and expectations. It worked well enough. When everyone shifted to virtual work, that traditional sales model went by the wayside. Even though we hadn’t needed them before, video calls suddenly became our only lifeline to customers. Management had to change its approach to coaching as well, as there was suddenly less visibility to what employees were working on than in the past. It was a time of great uncertainty and change. A New Tool to Take the Sales Team Digital Despite the upheaval, there was a silver lining. Glacier Media was already in the middle of its transition to digital marketing from traditional advertising product offerings of the past. Now we were moving our sales process from traditional to digital as well. And it was in the midst of this transition that we found a very valuable asset: Gong. The platform surfaced as a new tool to train, retain, and coach our sales representatives. I was fortunate to be one of the first people to review it, and there were a lot of “wow” factors from the start. One thing that really sparked my interest was the number of comparative stats available for every call. I liked that we could compare rep performance to hundreds of thousands of other calls at a glance and use that data to gauge our success as a team. It also had features like the ability to comment on call recordings at precise times, which represented a real evolution in coaching for me. Gong also assuaged our leadership team. With a shift to more virtual sales tactics, there was a lot of concern among management regarding what sales reps were doing with their time. How could we gauge rep activity if the sales force was working remotely 100% of the time? How could we coach and train effectively in this new environment? Gong allowed us to have more visibility into rep actions, and provided striking new ways to elevate them to success. Daniel La Porta, Glacier’s VP of Sales, was also a fan of Gong from the early days. He saw the value that coaching and training would add to the entire company, and we worked together to champion Gong with other internal stakeholders. It was one of the more straightforward deployments I’ve experienced, and it is the easiest platform to update and manager from a Product Manager level, where I now sit. Kickoff and training involved several members of Gong’s team walking reps through the software, how it worked, and how to use it for our specific use case, which stands a part from some of Gong’s other customers. The result? Some people jumped into the platform right away, but not everyone was so eager to try something new. Fostering Adoption for New and Experienced Reps Purchasing licenses for Gong indicated that Glacier Media was serious about investing in a virtual sales process, and confirmed that we were not going to go back to the way things were. Although this was a real positive note and actually a retention factor for me at Glacier, for people who had been doing sales the same way for decades, it was a giant and intimidating leap. We learned that adoption wasn’t really about Gong; it was about what Gong represents: a change in process to virtual sales. To overcome hesitancy and boost adoption, we tried several avenues, including training sessions, contests, incentives, and more. For some users, it clicked right away, and we saw an uptick in adoption as they began to see value in Gong. Eventually, we decided to focus on the people that embraced the platform and all newly hired employees, setting the expectation from the start that Gong is part of their role. Gong has totally changed the way we onboard new employees. Once I add them to the system, they immediately have access to hours of Glacier’s training material, which is important because we offer more than 45 different products and services. Historically, training reps on this large volume of offerings was a big ask for managers and new employees. However, now that we have a training folder within the Gong library, we lean heavily on it to teach new reps about our products. Not only does this resource enable new reps to start from a secure foundation of product information, but it puts time back into managers’ days because reps can access training information independently. During my early days as a sales rep, all I wanted to do was spend more time in sales settings and hear real conversations. I felt like every minute I spent in an actual sales call was worth hundreds outside of that environment. Now our reps have access to more than 2,000 call recordings, so they can hear what works and what doesn’t. I listen to new reps on a call and I think, “Wow, that sounds like me,” or just like a colleague of mine. New reps sound so professional so fast, and they espouse the value of Glacier Media’s products quickly because they can spend hours listening, watching, and putting the pieces together to find success on their own. Becoming a Better Coach I love giving feedback. I use Gong to compare statistics across all sorts of calls and drill down to offer the best feedback possible. One feature I like to highlight is the measurement of patience detected by the number of pregnant pauses between rep and client. I also leave comments at specific moments within a call, then go back to a rep with detailed examples of what they did well and where they can improve. Another great coaching feature is the scorecard. I’ve created three scorecards within the system based on the different types of calls that we conduct: exploratory, presentation, and reporting calls. These scorecards allow managers to rate our reps’ calls objectively based on certain criteria that’s approved by our VP, which provides a level of coaching consistency we’ve never had before at Glacier Media. We also use Gong to spot potential issues. We recently instructed a team member to spend more time in Gong, listening to other reps’ calls and engaging in training materials to help them get back on track. However, we didn’t see much success and weren’t sure if they had taken our direction. I looked in the system, and sure enough, they only had a few hours of activity within the platform over six weeks. This information was really helpful in informing our next steps in the 1:1 with the employee. Finally, I loved the ability to surface moments within sales calls to other areas of the organization. Rather than taking notes during a call and then relaying the relevant information to a colleague, you can insert comments at a specific moment within Gong. You can then tag the desired person in Gong, or copy a link to the relevant segment of the call, eliminating the need to rely on memory and poor translation. This feature makes Gong a valuable asset inside and outside the sales team. The Only Way Forward Is to Adapt If we had to do everything over again, we would spend more time earlier on working with the management team and the reps to introduce Gong, as opposed to focusing most attention on the reps. Adoption only works if everyone truly understands the system in place at all levels of the organization, and we have learned more and more over time that the needs of management and reps are quite different. This learning is something we’ve taken into consideration both with Gong moving forward, as well as other platform adoptions as we continue to add layers to our tech stack. My advice is this: if you receive pushback from your sales team, reinforce the benefits and persevere, trusting that your sales force will adjust over time—and will eventually benefit in spades. Gong filled our pre-existing gap around training and coaching. Today, our top salespeople are those who are leveraging new technologies and upskilling, coaching, and training themselves within Gong. For me, Gong is more than just a coaching tool. It represents a significant change in process for Glacier Media and demonstrates our commitment to the virtual sales process. It’s also a big wake-up call for organizations to not shy away from technology or adopting algorithm-based platforms. Technology is changing all organizations and industries, and sales and marketing are no exception. The tech stack will never get shorter, and if you don’t embrace it, your competitor will. Why not adjust your sales process to make everything work in your favour? 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 Learning and transforming: How Gong helps Udemy make critical revenue decisions Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Global Education How monday.com used Gong to align revenue teams around customers Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Global Software How Iron Mountain shortened new-hire ramp times by 3 months using Gong Enterprise Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Business Services

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How Stansberry Research finally got the info it needed (Hint: Gong)

Hannah Hapin — Sat, 25 Feb 2023 02:51:34 +0000

How Stansberry Research finally got the info it needed (Hint: Gong) Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Enterprise North America Media & Internet The challenge Stansberry was swimming in information, but accessing the right data at the right moment could swing deals in their favor. They needed a platform to do the heavy lifting for them by highlighting opportunities and providing call reports they could use to solidify their deal strategies. The outcome With Gong data, Stansberry teams see what makes a successful call, recognize patterns in their interactions so they can adjust on the fly, and build tools that serve departments across the organization. Since adopting Gong, Stansberry’s success rates have skyrocketed. Watch the video Headquarters Baltimore, MD Founded 1999 Company size 51-200 Employees Industry Publishing The thirst for information from Gong is growing on a regular basis across every department that interacts with customers. Nicholas Giro Managing Director, Sales & Member Services @ Stansberry Research Know more, up your odds Stansberry Research stakes their investment recommendations on understanding data, so they know the value of reliable information better than most. And not just any information, but the right knowledge at the right time. When the organization started using Gong, an influx of analytics helped them make purpose-driven decisions around strategy, coaching, and deal execution. “What we can do with those Gong recordings across departments, across themes, across trackers, and across topics is mind blowing,” says Stansberry Managing Director, Sales & Member Services, Nicholas Giro. Coach with an advanced playbook Even with checklists in place, nothing helps sales reps improve more than having the facts of their calls laid out in front of them. Previously, Giro and his team used random samplings of calls to set a coaching plan, but found that simply reviewing positives and negatives in a few calls didn’t have the impact they wanted. Once they started using Gong, reps were able to track their own performance, eliminating the need for as many one-on-ones with managers. Teammates could also learn from each other’s successes through peer-to-peer and self-coaching. “This tool lets reps verify their own actions,” says Giro. “But more importantly, they can see who’s at the top of the leaderboard and dive into those calls to hear what they do differently.” The additional data also means that leaders can drill into their own calls to solve problems quickly and get campaigns back on track. In one instance, Giro focused on a sales rep who was at the bottom of the leaderboard despite good top-level metrics. He took a snapshot of the rep’s previous two weeks and compared the numbers to the rep’s performance in a similar past campaign. “I quickly showed them the difference in key markers, and the rep went from being offpace to beating his campaign numbers by two or three orders,” says Giro. Gong gave Giro the ability to point to specifics, like the fact that when the rep was under pressure, his talk ratio went from 50% to 80%. “All of that came from a five-minute review that set him back on track,” says Giro. “When we can do that in a quick period of time, we can change the trajectory of an entire campaign.” The more information that’s easily available, and the more digestible that information is, the faster it can be put into action. Turn data into wins In addition to providing retrospective data, Gong also provides information about deal executions in the moment. Using Gong’s automatic insights, the Stansberry team quickly and efficiently sorts through calls to find missing pieces that can help close a deal. Because sales is a moving target, there is no single path to success. That means the more your tech stack helps you adjust your approach with relevant information, the better. “We’re constantly thirsty for information,” says Giro. “We do everything analytically with a purpose to drive benefits back to the end user so their experience is better. That ultimately makes our customer experience better.” Deal insights highlight opportunities to maximize revenue, so every sales rep can become your best rep, and every deal is within reach. “When you layer the analytics pieces that are inside Gong, the trackers we set up and the topics, this platform levels the playing field,” says Giro. Build informed strategies for the future Perhaps the most important thing analytics gives you is a clear path forward. Marketwise Solutions’ VP of Engineering, David Kline, understands that the most helpful tools use the most accurate data. And where better to get data than directly from the source? “This is zero-party data. Customers give you information about themselves directly,” says Kline. “Gong is an invaluable source of customer data that I really can’t get anywhere else.” For Kline, using Gong’s recordings is akin to building an entire system he’d otherwise not have the time or resources to create. “There are a lot of really interesting technical problems that this platform solved for us,” he says. Giro agrees. The data they can now access has elevated his team’s predictive analytics, future sales models, and future re-engagement models. “We believe in getting smarter about how we approach deals by building models we can measure and enrich and extend over time,” he says. “Gong was incredibly attractive because it has so many use cases. It’s a home run having Gong running through the whole ecosystem.” Indeed, the entire Stansberry ecosystem is benefitting, from sales, to marketing, to copywriting. “We’re working on dashboards using the data in Gong, showing it in different ways to different departments, to demonstrate relevant impact. The thirst for information from Gong is growing on a regular basis across every department that interacts with customers,” says Giro. “When we put all these elements together, the sky’s the limit.” 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 How Proposify cut its time spent on forecasting by 25% with help from Gong Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software BlueCat Empowers Their Field Team to Understand Their Pipeline Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Business Services

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LinkedIn Achieves Revenue Success with Gong

Hannah Hapin — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 19:21:16 +0000

LinkedIn Achieves Revenue Success with Gong Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Enterprise North America Media & Internet The challenge LinkedIn wanted to improve skills of sales reps, enhance the customer conversations, drive greater customer success, and advance their vision of economic opportunity. The outcome By using Gong, LinkedIn was able to help their team build stronger customer relationships by bridging sales skill gaps with enhanced coaching, refine how reps tackled their deals, and get a greater insight into market needs. Watch video Headquarters San Francisco, CA Founded 2002 Employees 5,000+ Website www.linkedin.com Industry Social Media Increasing Alignment LinkedIn connects the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. With more than 675+ million members worldwide, including executives from every Fortune 500 company, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. To help them achieve their vision of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce, they needed a tool that would help their sales teams express their message clearly, strategically, and with relevance to the market. LinkedIn chose Gong’s Revenue Intelligence platform to support them. David Ellis, a Director of Sales at LinkedIn shares, “Gong has been a powerful resource because it gives us information that aligns to our people, our results, and our strategy.” By using Gong across several business units, LinkedIn has been able to boost their sales team’s success in the several years that it has been using the platform. 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 Gong’s revenue intelligence fuels a 141% surge in Paycor’s client sales success Customer Stories Sales Leadership Videos Enterprise Deal Execution North America Software TouchBistro used Gong’s insights to lift close rates by 10% Small Business Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives North America Software How Funnel Increased Messaging Adoption by 76% Across Global Teams with Gong Small Business Strategic Initiatives Asia-Pacific Europe/Middle East/Africa Business Services

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How Gong Forecast helps Crayon spend 66% less time in forecasting calls

Hannah Hapin — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 20:45:14 +0000

How Gong Forecast helps Crayon spend 66% less time in forecasting calls Coaching Deal Execution Strategic Initiatives Small Business North America Media & Internet 66% less time spent in forecasting calls The challenge Prior to Gong Forecast, Crayon had to keep track of deal information from several sources and place them into a Google Sheet. The process was tedious and they lacked confidence in their forecasts. The outcome Through the use of Gong Forecast, Crayon reduced the amount of time spent in forecasting calls by 66%! Instead of forecasting calls based on opinions, they were now based on historical trends and current data. The Crayon team had greater confidence and more forecasting accuracy. Watch video Headquarters Boston, MA Founded 2015 Company size 150+ Industry Software Development Gong Forecast creates ownership and accountability for every team member, and provides an opportunity to measure our results over time so we can make better predictions in the future. This complete transparency allows us to devote more time to deals that actually need our attention. John Judge Senior VP of Sales “We need to use Gong.” That’s what John Judge said to Crayon’s Founder and CEO, Jonah Lopin, shortly after he started as SVP of Sales. “Gong’s reality platform is how we’ll get insight into what’s really happening inside our deals,” John said. “It will be the key to our coaching, our pipeline management, and competitive execution.” Crayon is “the recognized leader in competitive intelligence software,” giving organizations a complete, real-time view of their competitors’ activities. Companies rely on Crayon to not only track competitive intel, but to analyze and activate information across their entire organization. The result is a more informed company that makes better decisions. This is the story of how Crayon uses Gong to elevate their selling process, specifically when it comes to competitive selling and more predictive, data-driven forecasting. Gong Forecast: The future of data-driven forecasting is here Forecasting is hard. You spend hours collecting data and chasing down individual reps to submit their numbers. You prep for meetings, then look at individual deals during rep one-on-ones. Eventually, you have to defend your forecast without really knowing if it’s accurate. To complicate matters, your reps don’t have a single source of truth. They operate based on their own opinions. Are they overly optimistic? Too conservative? Sandbagging themselves? Who knows? Crayon knows, because they’ve been using Gong Forecast. It gives them accuracy they wouldn’t otherwise have, using three steps: Gong Forecast’s AI understands what customers say, write, read, and engage with, to get a complete picture of the reality in every deal. It autonomously surfaces pipeline risks and points out forecast changes. It keeps everyone involved in a deal aligned using a clear audit trail. While sales forecasting is both an art and a science, “Gong Forecast has injected this baseline fact of what’s going on in a deal into the way we look at a deal in our forecast.” This level of accuracy, according to Jonah Lapin, Crayon’s Founder and CEO, is critical to their business today. Crayon now uses the Forecast dashboard for every single forecasting call. According to John, “We were working in Google Sheets, dropping deal information from several sources into there. Now, we’re locked and loaded in one place.” This has reduced the amount of time they spend in forecasting calls by 66%. “What used to take at least an hour to get through our weekly forecast, we can now rip through in 20 minutes,” says John Judge, SVP Sales, Crayon. John loves it because it provides “fast, data-driven transparency for everyone involved in the deal.” The ability to see the historical forecasting record is also really exciting to Crayon. They can make forecasting calls based on historical trends and current data, not opinions. When sales leaders see that deals don’t have alerts, it gives the team more confidence that deals will move forward and that their forecast is accurate. Competitive intelligence meets revenue intelligence The Gong-Crayon relationship is mutual. Gong uses Crayon.Crayon uses Gong. Crayon uses Gong to improve their selling process, specifically for competitive selling. Gong + Salesforce + Crayon + Product Board means Crayon always has a really clear picture of what’s happening — a real-time win-loss analysis. They know when competitors pop up in deals so they can act in the moment, not lament the loss after the fact. “We have so much more transparency into our deals with the integrations Gong offers and this allows us to manage our pipeline more accurately and effectively,” says Jonah. Crayon also created Gong trackers that make it easy to dig in deep on specific competitor mentions. Sales managers can easily access the exact call snippet and “watch game tape” of those competitor discussions. Then they’re able to execute very targeted, very effective coaching. “Because of Gong,” says John, “our leadership is now out in front of deals thanks to what we see on the Deal board and the Forecast dashboard.” Gong removes the need for catch-up conversations and empowers managers to just jump right in. Want to read the latest email threads? No problem. Want to hear the latest conversations? No problem. Gong automatically populates your CRM (say, Salesforce) with competitive tracking information. Sales reps don’t even have to take notes! They can just focus on customer conversations. “It’s phenomenal,” exclaims John. “On the win-loss side,” Jonah continues, “Gong has made us much sharper and more clear-eyed in terms of market competitive dynamics.” Your early warning system “I think and I feel are the two phrases I fear the most when I hear them from sales reps,” says John. “I want them to know, and Gong helps us know.” Gong also helps Crayon prove that “if you do what the data says,” good things happen. Take, for example, Gong data on multi-threaded conversations. Building relationships with multiple stakeholders in a deal is one of the best ways to win deals. Gong’s insights have shown that close rates double (or even triple) when conversations are multi-threaded. John knows this; it’s not news to him. That said, he now has Gong data to prove the point. It’s irrefutable proof he can use to coach reps. The data doesn’t lie around battlecards, either. Before Gong, it was a “battle” to get sales reps to actually use Crayon battlecards even though sales managers (and John) knew that using them helped close more deals. So frustrating! Thanks to Gong’s data and insights, the data proves that when Crayon sales reps use Crayon-generated battlecards, they win more often. It’s a hard stop because the math is clear. “Gong is like an early warning system when competitors are part of a deal,” says John. As a bonus, Gong doesn’t just warn him about competitor discussions, it also suggests the next steps a rep should take to move a deal forward. Gong: way more than sales Gong is now an integral part of how Crayon delivers a great customer experience. It even shapes how their product evolves. Jonah calls Gong an “unfair advantage” in his sales funnel, but these days, the sales funnel isn’t limited to the sales team. “Gong isn’t just a sales tool,” John shared. “It’s a business tool.” It has the capacity to help the sales, customer success, and product teams all work together. Customer feedback generated in a Gong-recorded sales or customer success call feeds into the Product Board, which is pushed into Salesforce. This real-time customer feedback then feeds directly into Crayon’s product roadmap process in a very scalable way. Crayon gets the best of both worlds — the quantitative information about request numbers, and the qualitative magic (the “Golden Gong snippet,” as John calls it) that provides the texture and richness of the customers’ feedback. “In all areas of Crayon,” says Jonah, “Gong makes us more proactive in our competitive execution. Using Gong has made us a better company. Forecasting and closing deals is so much easier now that we have a source of truth. Gong’s reality platform is our single source of truth and transparency.” It’s a match you can duplicate in no time, using Gong Forecast. 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 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 How a Sales Talk Show Boosted ACV by 45% at Demandbase Enterprise Coaching Strategic Initiatives North America Software How Uberflip used Gong to create winning outcomes and push ACV up by 13% Small Business Coaching Deal Execution North America Software

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