The only way your sales reps can meet their quotas and close deals is if they have enough prospects in their pipeline. These are buyers who are a good fit for your products or services.  So how can you prospect more effectively? How can you ensure that you’re targeting and focusing on the right prospects? With a proven sales prospecting process. In this article, we’ll explain what sales prospecting is and why it’s important. We’ll also cover each stage of the sales prospecting process and provide our best prospecting tips that you can steal to elevate your sales strategy. What is sales pr ..read more

This article is part of the Gong Labs series, where we publish findings from our data research team. We analyze sales conversations and deals using the Gong Reality Platform’s proprietary AI, then share the results to help you win more deals. Subscribe here to read upcoming research. Zig Ziglar. Don Draper. Mary Kay Ash. Jordan Belfort. Joe Girard (google him). All incredible sales people. Some of which had some serious, ah, issues (looking at you, Belfort)… but all of them could sure sell.And no “best-of-the-best salesperson” list is complete without The Office’s Michael G. Scott. But the tru ..read more

Enterprise sales are a different beast than small to medium-sized business (SMB) transactions. They involve more decision-makers and have larger values. A strong sales process is crucial to navigate these deals successfully.  But how do you handle multiple decision-makers? How do you maintain deal momentum and keep large deals from “slipping”? Keep reading to find these answers and more. In this article, we’ll explain complex sales and how they differ from traditional sales. We’ll also describe each stage of the complex sales cycle and provide actionable insights for them. What is a compl ..read more

I’m excited to introduce Gong Smart Trackers—the first user-trainable system that goes beyond keyword recognition to understand the context of all your customer conversations. This changes the landscape of Revenue Intelligence, by enabling companies to better detect deal risk, quantitatively track adoption of strategic initiatives, and more. Generation 1 Tech: Audio/Video When Amit Bendov and I started Gong 7 years ago, it stemmed from a business pain.  Amit was running a SaaS business at the time and data in the CRM indicated that deals were slipping—but Amit couldn’t tell why. Generatio ..read more

Ahhh … Revenue Intelligence. We love that phrase.  Heck, Gong has been in the Revenue Intelligence game since it started in 2019. But what exactly is Revenue Intelligence and why it is an essential tool for any B2B company to be using? And how can teams other than sales benefit from actionable customer data and insights?  Let’s start from the top. What is Revenue Intelligence? Revenue Intelligence is the new way of operating based on customer reality instead of opinions. Revenue Intelligence is what we do here at Gong; we created the category! Feel free to browse our product page for ..read more

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all around us.  If you’ve ever used a smart assistant on your phone to ask a question, a chatbot to check up on an order, or social media to browse your feed, you’ve benefited from AI. More companies are leveraging AI to analyze data and uncover new insights. But they’re not stopping there; they’re also leveraging sales AI to boost their bottom line. What exactly is sales AI? How does it work? And how can you incorporate this technology into your sales process?  This article will talk about all these areas and explain why it’s more important today than ..read more

Tracking sales performance is the only way to know how well you and your team are doing. But the thing is, simply asking, “how much did we sell this month?” isn’t enough. Many aspects influence revenue growth – average sales cycle length, churn rate, and customer acquisition cost, to name just a few. So, to gain a 360-degree view of your sales teams’ performance, you need to track KPIs in each area, measuring team and individual performance beyond just the topline. This guide will explore 13 essential sales KPIs to track, measure, and report your sales efforts. What are sales KPIs?  First ..read more

Sales forecasting is a crucial activity for high-performing sales teams. It helps them create concrete action plans to close more deals in any given quarter. The problem is there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of consensus on how to actually do a sales forecast. Teams of all sizes use a bunch of different methods, making it difficult for those of us looking to put together our first sales forecast to understand what steps to take. In this article, we’re going to look at six different sales forecast examples using different forecasting methodologies so you can understand and decide wh ..read more

People love to spend time on prioritization.  After all, if you don’t spend time prioritizing business initiatives, you won’t be making progress in the right directions, right? Well, maybe not. In a perfect world, prioritization could be done using a simple formula: divide the expected outcome of an initiative by its cost, and go for the highest ratio. For example, say you’re building software. One potential product has an expected revenue of $50M and costs 10 person-years to develop. Another product has an expected revenue of $100M and costs 5 person-years to develop. You’d naturally pic ..read more

New customers are wonderful, but recurring customers are what keep a business afloat, especially for SaaS and other service companies. That’s why it’s critical to keep retention levels steady. As such, we have to understand both why clients return (or stay subscribed) and why some don’t. That’s why it’s important to analyze customer churn. By understanding who’s churning, when they’re churning, and why they’re abandoning your product, you can make changes that will appeal to your target audience and lower churn before it grows out of control.  But what exactly is customer churn? Why is an ..read more