Unpacking Gong – Should it be in your tech stack?

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Lauren Newalani

Content Writer for Whistle with multidisciplinary experience spanning over a decade.

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The ability to analyze and refine the sales process is an invaluable asset to any SDR agency. A reality-based, deal execution and forecasting tool like Gong could very well be the missing piece of your sales dilemma.

Whistle CEO, David Zeff spoke to Nathan Joel, Sales Director of KIPP about Gong and how it has the potential to assist your sales team. They talk benefits, company culture and features.

 

What is Gong?

Gong is a tool that allows organizations the ability to engage in collaborative forecasting through the use of AI and data-backed, sales pipeline inspections. More than just a call recording system, Gong uses call statistics to identify risks to the sales process as well as pinpoint the variables that contributed to sales won and lost. An added benefit that companies see post-adoption, is the elimination of sales silos that could potentially cripple the sales process. There is an inherent advantage of having control of all your CRM tools from one place. Gong does that and much more. How useful would it be to create automated and personalized customer email outreach? Now imagine having a real-time stream of customer engagement data that lets you send accurate, perfectly timed trigger communication.

 

Transparency

Incorporating this type of technology into your company’s systems immediately adds a jolting level of transparency to the sales process. Recordings are available and accessible to anyone with access to them and management are free to make comments, suggestions or review them. Team leaders and managers don’t have to rely on notes that lack details or written meeting summaries from SDRs that can be either too vague or overly anecdotal.

This may prove to be a drastic adjustment for some salespeople that are in highly competitive teams and generally keep their cards very close to their chests. Some may initially feel that the system is intrusive or has an element of ‘big brother’ keeping tabs on their meetings. This may lead to them not being able to behave naturally or be unable to perform to their usual standards due to being self-conscious.

Here comes the big but… If an organization adopts and embraces a culture of teamwork and understands that symbiosis brings success to the organization, then the recordings, reviewing and suggestions all become developmental to the SDR and the company as a whole.

 

Camera Shy? – You Will Get Over It. Trust the System.

Just knowing that you are being recorded is enough to make you conscious of every nose-twitch, finger-tap and filler sound that you could ever imagine. More than that, many SDRs are afflicted by FOMU (Fear of Messing Up) which ramps up the pressure of the conversation drastically. According to Joel, time is the answer. As SDRs become more au fait with Gong they begin to see it as a self-evaluation tool. A mirror of sorts, in which to polish their skills and improve their discovery process.

In his experience with SDRs using Gong, Joel says that the enthusiasm, immersion and focus that SDRs dedicate to their craft using Gong is directly proportional to the success they achieve in the industry. 

 

Features and Functions of Gong

To the initiated, Gong has a variety of features that range from bread and butter to bell and whistles. SDRs looking to improve their ‘discovery’ calls can make use of the function that measures individual talk time during the call. This is an especially important point for new SDRs to focus on. The ideal talk time during this type of call is less than 50% as the aim of the call is to let prospects talk in order to discover their specific pain points.

Gong also provides stats on your ‘question rate’ per conversation. Too many begins to feel like an inquisition and too few means that you haven’t learned anything about the prospect. Most SDRs aim for a happy medium. This training tool allows SDRs to develop their listening ability and fosters a more consultative style of sales call. Believe it or not, the art of conversation is all about being curious and listening to the prospect. People want to be heard. It really is that simple.

Call recording is a fantastic ‘safety net’ that lets you go back and confirm details, figures and deliverables. The ultimate benefit for the company becomes apparent when using Gong on bigger teams. It aids and speeds up the onboarding process for new SDRs as hundreds of call recordings are available to new reps to listen to and assimilate into their own conversations. They extract what works for them and from that, develop their own unique approach. 

 

Whether companies use Gong or any other recording software, the end aim is to collectively learn from each other. Leadership however needs to be very mindful that the method and style of delivering feedback is equally important. It should always be constructive and tailored to suit the personality of the SDR in question.