Front Line Managers (FLM) are simultaneously faced with three fundamental and interconnected challenges that they must manage in order to be successful. These challenges are improving individual rep performance while also creating consistency and efficiency on their teams. If these components are missing, the risk to FLMS are missing their quota, inconsistencies in forecasting accurately, and wasted cycles because of inefficiencies across the team.
As a Gong partner at GTM Advisors, I help frontline managers like you uncover what’s really happening in your pipeline so that you can identify disconnects and make data-driven decisions to adjust your coaching strategy.
Here are three tips for using Gong to improve performance and drive consistency across your team:
Do a pulse check with “Deal Drivers”
Oftentimes the answers to our issues lie in opportunities. To get a sense of where overarching problems might persist, go into “Drivers'' under Deals and ask yourself:
- Are we single threaded consistently?
- Is one rep getting ghosted vs. another?
Make sure to review across different periods to identify trends.
- With that as context, dig further into “warning” signs across late stage pipelines. Sort all your team’s deals by close date & ACV, then ask yourself: are we getting ghosted?
- Is this deal actually dead?
Click into deals, review the emails, and follow the trend of engagement over time. Repeat the process from commit to best case deals. Oftentimes, the email communications or ending of last call is a big leading indicator of where the issues exist.
Leverage Points of Interest to validate Prospect’s desires
Once you get a general baseline for where gaps may be hindering performance, you can dig into your prospect's voice.
Utilizing the “Points of Interest” feature when reviewing calls, you can uncover specific problems at scale. For example, if they’re consistently getting ghosted after the first call, analyze 1st call discovery calls and look at next steps and objection points across the team to see what’s coming up and how they’re handling it.
Pro tip: Analyze data with consistent denominators and try to review calls with the same components. For example, analyze calls across similar verticals and personas to see what trends lie beneath the surface.
Review aggregate trends with Win/Loss Data
With Win/Loss functionality, you can slice the data to find further optimization and coaching points. With the “CRM Filters” you're able to filter to get the views you need, such as on net new deals or deals by verticals.
Oftentimes you’ll start to see some gaps around verticals and ICP that will inform the organization on where skill improvement or changes in targeting is needed. This could mean addressing how reps should engage with specific personas, more education on certain verticals or adjusting how the organization is targeting certain industries.
Pro tip: Leverage deal duration in opportunity coaching to help reps understand that anything taking “longer” than average is at risk of not closing. Using insight gained from the win/loss analysis you can Identify why the deal is stalled and coach reps on these specific gaps.
Real life Case Study
Let’s look at a real life case study where the above analysis helped to identify the root cause of rep performance, inconsistencies, and misalignment between leadership and its front line sales reps.
I recently worked with a client whose leaders were concerned about their reps underperforming as they struggled to meet their new business goals, but the data showed strong win-rates compared to others in the industry.
Based on their CRM, it was difficult to break down where the team was spending their time and even harder to see what’s a true day-in-the-life for a rep. They couldn’t truly get to the root cause their issues.
With Gong, we were able to dig deeper without having to sift through each activity and email. What we uncovered was that reps were getting ghosted and didn’t have the right activity on opportunities.
Additionally, we looked into the type of opportunities and calls across the team - what we found was that reps were actually spending the majority of their time on renewals + emailing back and forth on support issues. The real problem was capacity issues and role alignment - they weren’t able to spend time on net new deals. With those details, we were able to help the team’s leaders focus on where their reps should spend their time.
The three tactics above help uncover critical insights so that you can bridge the gap between your team and your execs. For more tips like this, I highly recommend checking out the FLM certification course in Gong!