Forecast Archives - Gong

Verse.ai drives 76% revenue growth and 25% more accurate forecasting with Gong

Hannah Hapin — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 16:40:03 +0000

Verse.ai drives 76% revenue growth and 25% more accurate forecasting with Gong Engage Forecast Commercial North America Software 76% increase in revenue from closed-won deals 25% Greater forecast accuracy The challenge Prior to using Gong, Verse.ai relied on a suite of solutions, which offered the revenue organization limited visibility into their sales pipeline and customer engagement. This hindered the company’s growth as well as its ability to achieve financial predictability. The outcome After evaluating multiple platforms, it became clear that Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform was the ultimate solution to Verse’s challenges. They now have 25 percent greater forecast accuracy thanks to improved visibility into their pipeline, customer interactions, and other critical business metrics — and they’ve improved their revenue by a whopping 76 percent. Headquarters San Diego, CA founded 2013 company size 70+ industry Technology, Information and Internet “The things that keep me up at night aren’t the things I know,” says Damien Swendsen, SVP of Revenue at Verse.ai. “With Gong, I have the insights I need to run my business and sleep soundly.” Before consolidating on Gong, Verse’s sales team struggled with the accuracy of their pipeline data and their customer engagement levels. And Verse knows a thing or two about customer engagement. The company’s platform allows its clients to stand out in a crowded marketplace by transforming their customer interactions using AI-powered conversations. When Verse embarked on a journey to boost their own sales efficiency and profitability, they focused on downsizing to one solution that could offer deep insights, seamless integration, and actionable recommendations. After churning off several other platforms, consolidating onto Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform was the ultimate solution to Verse’s challenges. Consolidating on Gong led to a 76% boost in revenue The entire Verse go-to-market team uses Gong to capture signals, track engagement, and get actionable recommendations based on powerful insights. Automation has taken the guesswork out of the sales process so reps can focus on closing deals. The introduction of Gong Engage further amplified Verse’s productivity by enabling reps to easily compose personalized emails at scale in a fraction of the time it used to take. With 100 percent of AEs’ emails now sent through Engage, the sales team experienced a noticeable improvement in its sales velocity, allowing them to handle more interactions with prospects and reducing the time to close. The team expanded their top-of-funnel activity while using fewer resources and achieved a 76 percent boost in their revenue. Beyond increasing its sales activity, the revenue org brought consistency into its customer interactions across the team by using Gong’s Scorecards and call recordings. New hires can ramp up faster, and every interaction is aligned with Verse’s messaging. This leads to better decision-making, earlier identification of deal risks, and more effective sales strategies. The result is an increased sales velocity, shorter sales cycles, and a drastic reduction in time spent on non-selling activities. “Our teams have been able to significantly increase the volume of interactions they have with prospects and customers, leading to a 76 percent increase in revenue.” —Damien Swendsen, SVP of Revenue at Verse.ai Sales team achieves 25% greater forecast accuracy Before Gong, Verse relied on spreadsheets and CRM data for its forecasting, but both quickly became outdated and were prone to human error. Gong’s Salesforce integration offered the team a new level of data accuracy and transparency, which led to a 25 percent increase in the team’s forecast accuracy. They can now have more strategic conversations about deals in the pipeline and know where to focus.“I’m a visual learner,” Damien says. “If I’m having a 1:1 review with a director of sales or an AE, I can easily see in Gong when someone last spoke to a client or prospect.” Gong’s data-driven approach ensures that Verse focuses on the deals that are most likely to close. Rather than being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of leads, they can prioritize quality over quantity. “Everyone wants higher volume, but it’s critical to maintain quality,” Damien says. “Gong allows us to increase both the velocity and volume of deals while ensuring quality isn’t sacrificed.” “No other platform has the full complement of functionality and the ease of use that Gong offers.” —Damien Swendsen, SVP of Revenue at Verse.ai Driving velocity and growth across the entire go-to-market team One of the biggest shifts since adopting Gong has been the improved alignment and collaboration among Verse’s sales, marketing, and customer success teams. With Gong, it’s much easier to ensure seamless handoffs so revenue team members have all the relevant information and context they need. This has resulted in improved customer sentiment, along with more frequent upselling and cross-selling opportunities for Verse. “For me, it’s really about having the insights, the data visibility, and the training for my team — and being able to access the data without asking the sales team how deals are performing,” says Julie Smutko, Director of Demand Generation at Verse.ai. “I can watch the entire journey, from when leads come into our system to interactions with sales and beyond.” Just like the sales team does, the marketing team now also leverages Gong’s insights to refine their content and campaigns. Rather than relying on intuition, they base their strategies on highly accurate customer interaction data. “It’s really important for us to gain insight from our data and understand what resonates with prospects and customers,” Julie adds. “Gong helps us direct our marketing spend toward channels and programs that deliver positive outcomes for the sales team.” “Everyone wants higher volume, but it’s critical to maintain quality. Gong allows us to increase both the velocity and volume of deals while ensuring quality isn’t sacrificed.” —Damien Swendsen, SVP of Revenue at Verse.ai Faster sales cycles, more accurate forecasts, and consistent growth At Verse, Gong has proven to be much more than a sales solution. It has become a strategic partner, driving forecast accuracy and sales and marketing efficiency. The team feels Gong’s influence at every stage of the sales and marketing funnel — from initial engagement to closing. With its robust analytics, seamless integrations, and AI-powered recommendations, Gong empowers Verse’s teams to operate at peak efficiency. Verse’s success illustrates the transformative power of revenue intelligence — even in today’s competitive market. By embracing Gong, their revenue org has unlocked new levels of efficiency and growth that will drive their business forward for years to come. Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. 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Canva’s 6% revenue boost: How using Gong transformed their strategy

Hannah Hapin — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 20:20:36 +0000

Canva’s 6% revenue boost: How using Gong transformed their strategy Deal Execution Engage Forecast Enterprise Asia-Pacific Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software 6% increase in revenue 60% increase in rep capacity The challenge Reps and managers on Canva’s EMEA sales team found it difficult to get insights into their customers and book of business. That meant pipeline decisions weren’t always market- or data-driven — all of which made it tough to grow the business. The outcome Canva used Gong Engage and Gong Forecast to bring innovation into their sales process, experimenting with messaging, tactics, and strategies that respond to the market. This improved productivity, and secured more accurate forecasting. It enabled a 60% boost in rep capacity and a 6% growth in the team’s revenue. Headquarters Surry Hills, New South Wales founded 2012 company size 5,000+ industry Software Development There’s astounding growth happening at Canva, the global visual communication platform. They’re a “name to know” if you have an eye on powerful and transformative platforms. (And we do!) Behind the scenes, one of the tools Canva’s EMEA sales team relies on to drive growth: Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform. Moving the team into Gong’s unified platform has boosted innovation across Canva’s sales process while also creating operational rigor for their sellers — they can drive predictable revenue and create pipeline growth. Canva’s EMEA sales team adopted Gong after bumping up against the all-too-common frustration of needing better deal, workflow, and customer interaction insights to support productivity and growth. Given the company’s dedication to innovation and creativity, they recognized Gong as a kindred platform — one with the power to transform its users. Gong Engage enables a 60% jump in rep capacity and unleashes revenue growth Jorge Bestard, Canva’s Head of Sales and Success EMEA, wanted his team to easily surface insights from frontline customer interactions. Today, Gong AI insights are critical to multiple functions at Canva — product, marketing, SDRs, account executives, and managers. Since adopting both Gong and Gong Engage — a sales engagement solution that pairs with the larger platform — Canva’s AEs and managers have seen a 60% increase in their capacity to manage their book of business. This is driven by insights that are gathered through conversation intelligence and surfaced using Gong AI. The team now uses Gong and Gong Engage to create efficiencies throughout the sales process: “When our reps speak with customers, it’s very important that we get all the insights from those interactions and use them to give guidance on how to personalize at scale. With Gong Engage, we’re able to do all of that with ease.” —Jorge Bestard, Canva’s Head of EMEA With this type of support from Gong, the team is able to manage more accounts more efficiently, which has led to a 6% increase in revenue across the sales region. Enhanced forecasting leads to predictable revenue “Gong’s insights are incredibly important to our projections.” —Jorge Bestard, Canva’s Head of EMEA With Gong Forecast, Jorge’s team automatically receives insights into what closes deals and what doesn’t, alongside continuous forecast updates. These insights are a foundational part of Canva’s three-pronged forecasting approach. This approach begins with an AE’s sense of a deal, which is important, but can only take Jorge and his team so far. That’s why he turns to the Gong metrics that reflect Canva’s chosen sales methodology, and data signals that Gong surfaces automatically from SDRs’ and AEs’ customer interactions. Jorge says this third aspect, in particular, is what really solidified accuracy in the team’s forecasting. “It’s what makes everything whole,” he says. “We can’t compare it to anything we’ve used in the past.” This predictability and accuracy helps Jorge and his leadership team make smarter, data-based decisions about where to focus their resources, how quickly to scale their teams, and more. His managers also use the metrics and data signals from Gong for highly targeted coaching. “The AI insights our first- and second-line managers get from Gong’s Ask Anything, and the AI insights that come from Gong automatically, allow us to forecast and coach more effectively.” Fueling innovation at Canva with Gong’s insights “Gong’s AI is my chief of staff.” —Jorge Bestard, Canva’s Head of EMEA The teams in Jorge’s sales region connect with customers in more than 20 languages, and Gong captures and translates them all with industry-leading accuracy. Access to these regional market insights has improved the team’s operational excellence across the board. Managers can surface best practices in any language using Ask Anything — a generative AI feature that answers any questions about a contact, deal, or account — then tailor and test those practices in their own region. “Gong has also become the platform where we go to do sales experiments around new messaging, tactics, or strategies,” says Jorge. If the team wants to try out messaging for a CIO versus a CTO, they test it in Gong. Jorge says that before Gong, it was like managers were in a black box, just hoping their new messaging would work. But now they know exactly what their reps say and its effect on win rates. “Our managers used to have to sit in on too many calls to get a sense of where their reps needed coaching. Today, they can easily sift through market trends and manage 60 to 70 deals at once.” These managers use what they learn to shape their team’s sales messaging, go-to-market strategies, and even which products they talk about — leaning heavily on Gong’s customer insights and the ability to surface analytics from their experiments. “Gong has also enabled our product team to get a lot closer to our customers. When they think about a new feature, they actually go to Gong first.” The product team regularly listens to key moments from sales calls — moments where customers talk about their greatest pains and what they really crave in a design solution. That allows the product team to respond directly to customer needs and create moonshots that customers don’t even realize they need. Jorge says it’s clear that the entire revenue team is able to make better decisions. From deciding where to invest human capital, to which markets to go into (and why), to considering price sensitivity in certain countries or regions, Gong AI enables it all. Canva is equipped for a data-driven future “Having our data all in one platform, at each step of the process, means we can make better data-driven decisions to really drive our region into the future,” says Jorge. Gong has become an essential platform in shaping the team’s go-to-market strategy. They’re now able to manage their pipeline 60% more efficiently and are seeing a boost in revenue, starting with a 6% increase on the EMEA team. “Gong has been a great partner because it has gotten us closer to our customers than ever before.” Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. 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Alignment across RevOps and reps brings Frontify a 30% increase in lead conversion

Hannah Hapin — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 20:43:15 +0000

Alignment across RevOps and reps brings Frontify a 30% increase in lead conversion Deal Execution Engage Forecast Small Business Europe/Middle East/Africa North America Software 30% increase in lead conversion 20% increase in forecast accuracy The challenge Frontify used a combination of customized business intelligence solutions and spreadsheets — a workflow that was prone to errors. These cumbersome processes had a negative impact on productivity, pipeline conversion, and revenue predictability. The outcome Frontify gained contextualized signals on every customer interaction by consolidating onto the Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform. Using Gong Engage, the sales team refined its messaging and increased lead conversion rates by 30 percent. Plus, real-time insights into deal health from Gong Forecast led to a 20 percent increase in the company’s forecast accuracy. Headquarters St.Gallen, Switzerland founded 2013 company size 500+ industry Software Development Building an iconic brand takes a village and — perhaps most importantly — that village has to be on the same page. That’s where Frontify comes in. Frontify bills itself as “the brand for the people behind brands.” The company offers a cloud-based, brand-building platform that combines digital asset management, brand guidelines, and templates into a fully collaborative single source of brand truth. As the Head of Revenue Operations at Frontify, Naya Tsoukala knows a thing or two about building the Frontify brand. “My priorities include fostering alignment between sales, customer success, and all commercial teams, ensuring that we have a streamlined way of looking at forecasting and processes that set us up for success,” she says. However, that had been tough to do when the revenue team had to manage and integrate multiple solutions. Ironically, what the Frontify platform helps brand teams achieve around the world, the Frontify sales teams weren’t able to do for themselves because they had too many tools that didn’t play well together. “Consolidation has been the main driver,” Naya says. “It’s always amazing to have one platform where you can do everything — from pipeline management to forecasting — with productivity and sophisticated insights.” Previously, all data had to flow through Frontify’s CRM. Because the revenue team had other products integrated with the CRM, they encountered integration problems that led to unreliable or incomplete sales data. They had lots of data, but little confidence. To alleviate these challenges, Naya and her revenue team switched to the Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform, including Gong Forecast for greater revenue predictability and Gong Engage for full-cycle sales engagement. 30% growth in lead conversion by switching to Gong Engage Before they consolidated onto a unified platform, Frontify was using Outreach to support its sales processes. “What Outreach is lacking is those contextual signals that allow our sales teams to engage more efficiently and intelligently with our prospects,” says Naya. By switching to Gong Engage, reps at Frontify have more detail on every customer interaction right at their fingertips, allowing them to refine their messaging and increase lead conversion rates by 30 percent. “Gong’s AI has changed our approach to sales engagement,” she adds. “We now have actionable insights that we can leverage. We don’t need to add CRM notes — you can just ask AI to give you a summary. Everything is at our fingertips.” Beyond increased win rates, Frontify’s sales team is also seeing a higher quality of leads entering the pipeline. And with centralized workflows and full context across account histories, the company’s reps can spend less time searching for deal insights and more time selling. “We’ve noticed a drastic improvement on our lead conversion rate. We are noticing a 30 percent increase.” — Naya Tsoukala, Head of Revenue Operations at Frontify Forecast accuracy grows by 20% with real-time insights Running a well-oiled revenue machine is about more than just converting leads or generating pipeline (even though those are critical). It’s also about making that revenue predictable. But Frontify’s cobbled-together solutions lacked the real-time data necessary to power the company’s forecasting system. This led to friction between the teams because they didn’t have a standardized approach to pipeline management. “We used to miss our quarterly forecast by 30 or 40 percent,” Naya says. “Since implementing Gong Forecast, we’ve noticed a 20 percent increase in our forecast accuracy.” The real-time insights into deal health and progression that Gong Forecast provides have led to more efficient pipeline management, directly contributing to Frontify’s revenue growth. “It’s a win-win situation for everybody,” Naya says. “It’s a win for RevOps because we get to implement the infrastructure setup we strive for, and it’s a big win for reps because they get the results they’re aiming for.” “Gong’s reliable and precise forecasts are now being trusted and used by our board to inform strategic decisions.” — Naya Tsoukala, Head of Revenue Operations at Frontify Finally, a platform everyone loves The ability to deliver a seamless experience to reps has been game-changing both for Frontify and for its frontline. As Naya says, “They do their jobs better. They convert better. They’re happier. Reps now have a greater ability to accelerate their results.” And with increased alignment across teams, the company’s revenue organization can now enjoy a unified and streamlined experience similar to what Frontify’s own brand-building platform is bringing to businesses around the world. “Working with Gong has helped us stay ahead of competition by providing detailed and actionable insights that drive revenue.” — Naya Tsoukala, Head of Revenue Operations at Frontify Back to All Stories Have questions or want a custom demo? We’re here to help! Click the button below and we’ll be in touch. 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