I find the most helpful way to get stakeholder buy in is to focus on frontline managers. Start with a workshop session to understand their top priorities. Connect one or more of their priorities with how Gong’s capabilities support. Too many tools are rolled out without them connecting to an actual problem in the field and without the specific connection between the solution and user base. The critical stakeholder in Gongs adoption is the frontline manager driving coaching, they should be the target. Once this has been done, find your best advocate within this group who you can celebrate their success and use as your example with the rest of the team.

We will have a ‘demo roadshow’ where each week an account executive will select a recording they want to share and review with the team. We’ll all review the recording before our next team meeting and talk about the suggestions we noted on the recording inside of the platform. Our reps have found it helpful to get advice from not only managers but also seasoned sales reps on their demos. 

In the projects that I have managed I would say that all started with metrics. Identifying what are their pains or business goals and providing them with a clear structure of how we will get there. After it is approved for the first time then focusing in the users and team that actually get impacted by this initiative, getting their sign in is key! They will be the people that internally will share the message of how great is what you are doing and it will make it easier for you when you get back to your executive sponsor with all results and proposals of continuity. 

Throughout the different projects I have led - showing metrics of the tool is the easiest way to demonstrate value & drive exec buy in. I start with introducing the tool (gong) to the front line managers and involving them with all the key decisions. After seeing the value in the tool, the front line managers will push for the tool to the execs.

My best advice for stakeholder buy in is to get leaders & managers to understand the ‘ why are we doing this’ or ‘why are we rolling this out’ along with ‘how does this help me’ 

I’ve found that in any presentation or conversation with key stakeholders, its important to set the tone of the meeting with answers to why are we doing this & why is this tool beneficial to the company or their department. Followed by answering how this tool or software help me in my day to day job. 

If you manage to link the why & how along with a demo of the technology you are trying to roll out, you should have success in gaining stakeholder buy in.  

The best way to get stakeholder buy in is to focus on frontline managers. Start with a Gong CSM session to explore their priorities. Connect one or more of their priorities with how Gong’s capabilities support them.  Focus on actual real-world problems that the tool can resolve in the field. Once the frontline managers see the benefit they will in turn drive coaching and adoption. Frontline managers should always be the priority. Once this has been done, follow-up with monthly sessions targeting wins/losses from the tool.

I’ve found with the numerous systems I have helped roll out across different “start-ups” in my time, is to be aware of how that tool is going to positively impact the sales team. 

Without a business driving sales, they aren’t going to get long term investment into their product. As companies scale, they want to ensure that a sales person’s time is spent maximising the “selling” and limiting the admin side of sales which takes up valuable time. 

If you can prove that the software you are wanting to implement is going to save time and money in the long run, then it will be a no brainer (Like Gong!). If you fail to provide that value, then you will find you will never get anywhere with any company because the value on what’s important to the company hasn’t been met. 

→ Thats the decision makers buy-in. 

Then you also need to make sure you’re getting buy-in from the people who are going to be directly using the product. I have seen time and time again, if the team isn’t hyped about the product and someone higher up is implementing it because they think it’s a good idea without talking to the team, then they wont use the product properly which will then cost the business money in the long run and you will become a churned customer.

The best way to receive stakeholder buy-in is to align Gong’s value to your Sales Leadership team’s primary business objectives. Meet with your stakeholder(s) and make sure they understand how Gong delivers value across each of their top-level initiatives helps create a sense of urgency around tool adoption and use. It’s also important that you ensure your stakeholder(s) understand exactly how Gong works to support their needs and how it will make a positive business impact. 

In the different rollouts I have been apart of getting stakeholder buy-in has always been interesting. The biggest piece of advice I have might not just be Gong related but building a relational bridge and having trust helps. I start with any company by helping support any actions the stakeholders are going after. Being active in what they are looking to do. I have found that if I then bring anything new or have an ask they are more receptive to listen to the Why’s in the situations. Outside of that I respect their time and cut the filler that does not directly relate to them and go deeper as conversations go on as needed or requested. 

Based on using Gong at previous companies, my thoughts and recommendations to get stakeholder buy-in would be to share success stories you might’ve had while using Gong previously and including how it has benefited frontline managers and sales reps. 

The best way in my opinion to get stakeholder buy-in is surfacing the data that Gong or any other tool/project provides that we would not be able to see with another tool. In deal boards, Gong surfaces warnings due to the multiple sources the tool can connect to, ie next steps, number of contacts being reached out in a deal, etc. 

The best piece of advice is difficult, because the best piece of advice is always dependent on each organization. A tried and true principal is to align with business/department needs, which is always great, but that just justifies the purchase of the tool.

To truly get stakeholder buy-in, you need to treat it like a sale, which almost everything is. You need to understand your stakeholders, what their pains are, what they consider a success, and most importantly,  how can the tool (Gong) be used to benefit their personal goals/objectives/KPIs. It sounds selfish but unless you are a Buddhist monk, humans rarely back initiatives that are good for everyone else but them.

Personal win + Team/department win + business strategy alignment = very invested stakeholder.

But that is just one of many ways to excite a influential stakeholder. 

My best piece of advice for proper stake-holder management, is to simply have empathy. Put yourself in their shoes, see through their eyes, and think about what else they care about.  What you’re proposing MUST solve a major pain-point and/or business need of theirs and the company. 

I would also recommend having confidence. Sometimes, proposing new ideas, tools, and initiatives to Stakeholders, including the C-Level, can seem intimidating, but it only becomes intimidating if you aren’t 110% bought and a true believer in that what you’re proposing, and that what you're proposing will do what you’re saying it will actually do. If you don’t believe in it, who else is going to? 

EMPATHY + SOLVING PAIN + BETTER BUSINESS OUTCOMES + CONFIDENCE = STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT. 

Cheers!

Gong is a powerful tool and my take on getting stakeholder buy-in is simple.

1. Spend time with the team or stakeholders that will gain the impact from the system to understand what their needs and wants are within the parameters of GONG.
2. Ask questions around the key features that GONG does really well.
3. Develop a 30-60 story around a use case based on what you’ve uncovered and how it will impact the development of the person as well as the broader team. 

People respond and understand stories, not features. Good luck! 

As with most things, it really all comes down to how it can make your life easier.

The ability to quickly gain insight on what is driving deals, what’s holding deals back, and what habits lead to good calls is a game changer. Especially for our BDR leaders. 

Seeing how they could find immediately actionable items for calls in one place really created a strong desire to use Gong.

Don’t be afraid to go slow- you know your team cultures and needs. Gong has so many amazing features and tools. And if you are adopting Gong to help teams with efficiencies and transparency around selling, you might not have all the information ready with regards to key word tracking, deal boards, and forecasting. Go at the pace you need and work with a small team who is willing to learn with you and be your testers.

Find your champions. When rolling out a new process or program to the stakeholders you need to have your champions. You need someone at the L1/C-Suite who sees the value in what you’re trying to implement and will help to remove blockers and provide support as you roll out changes to the organization. You also need champions at the front-line level that are willing to roll with the punches as you run into issues during roll out and will be positive throughout the process. These champions will help you implement and adapt as things change and you learn what will work best for your team. They will be the positive voice in the crowd as you encounter resistance to change and they can be the partners that help lead by example and help train teammates on best practices. When you have Champions fighting for you it makes the whole process easier and you’re less likely to get resistance that could fatally stall your roll-out. 

In my experience, it’s been easier to get our frontline managers to adopt Gong in their day-to-day, but trickier to get our ELT bought in because they’re not in the program all the time. To solve for this, we started to use Gong analytics in all of our enablement success reporting, from the onboarding of new hires (ex: how many Gong calls newbies listen to during their first 90 days) to ongoing enablement initiatives (Which reps are using new product rollout language with customers? How are customers reacting to the new product offerings?). Our executive team finds the language analytics and trackers to be super insightful!

As in any new technology introduction, there will be a change element.  Define what this element means - and it will be different to each department heads.  Always ask / be ready to answer “what is the problem we are trying to solve”.  In start-up companies that are looking for brand awareness, the message our reps send out is critical.  Are we delivering the right message for the business?  Is this message getting through to your prospects?  How can we further define these metrics in order to drive behavior that gets results.  

The stake-holders will support so long as we give them a reason to.  What does this mean to them?  How can the company benifit from these measurements and use this information into business decisions.  From a product roll-out and adoption strategy, you should have a stake holder and a champion within your organization.  Cater to them as they are your mouth piece for further adoption.  Make your communication and updates results driven with weekly follow ups during the first 90 days after roll-out.

I think stakeholder buy in really comes down to story-telling, and making sure the right people hear the core messaging of that story loud and clear.  So many in this thread have hit the nail on the head with they emphasize that getting front-line managers invested first, aligning business objectives to the ‘why’ of Gong, and highlighting metrics of success are key.  What I’d also add is designating folks as ‘Gong champions’ within an org can be helpful as well!  I used to work in school districts, and a big part of getting people excited about a new tool, curriculum, or pedagogical approach was to ‘train the trainer’.  In other words, designate a cohort of individuals who are clearly leaders, have social capital, and have a strong ability to get others excited about a change to be at the forefront of messaging.   These individuals are also who others can come to with FAQs about Gong, and provide another level of psychological safety for people to share their misgivings / frustrations about the roll-out.  

Stakeholder buy in is so important. I have found with some other systems that if you do not have the stakeholder’s buy in, then no one else in the organization will buy into the product either. 

It is about selling it. I never thought I would be a sales rep, but when it comes to getting the stakeholder buy in, you have to sell the system/product to them. You have to show them how important the tool is not to just them, but the reps and the organization. I have to play both the admin and the sales rep. Answer any technical questions and show/tell them how cool this tool is. 

Something I love doing is a pilot. Bringing in the data and showing just how much a tool can help within a short term, really helps incorporating how it can for sure help us in the long term. The stakeholder typically cares about a few things: ease of use, productivity, and does it solve our problem. If you can prove or show them that the tool can do all three, then you have them sold.

Not sure how many people have gotten stakeholder’s buy in versus not having it, but there is a world of difference. When our stakeholder really buys into something then he basically does my job for me. He gets leadership and reps to start adopting the tool for me. The only thing I have to worry about now is coaching on the tool. Because of their buy in, I only had to do half of the work instead trying to get buy in from everyone. 

Stakeholders are often-times managing multiple initiatives at once. As program manager’s, we always have our use-cases prepared, but making sure that those use-cases are concise, aligned with internal initiatives, and backed by data are the key pillars I use when generating buy-in.

I think that the number one thing to focus on when getting stakeholder buy in is the outcome of getting the tool and how it furthers company goals. Even better is if you can identify measurable metrics that you can review once you’ve acquired a tool, to have solid evidence that the tool is providing benefit to the organisation. This can be a lot of work, but a good salesperson will help you build the business case internally so that you’re not working alone.

• Demonstrate the value of Gong adoption by comparing pre and post deployment performance. Build “headlines” with this data to show the value realization of Gong adoption and its upstream impact on KPIs/OKRs
• Listen to the frontline users consistently (with extra patience during rollout!), and implement configuration changes based on feedback where applicable. Ensure that the process for feedback collection is easily understood and transparent. 
• Embrace early adopters and encourage them to share testimonials with the stakeholders. Make the group as diverse as possible i.e. from all participating groups. 

I believe the most helpful way to get stakeholder buy in is to take a three-pronged approach focusing on the frontline managers, focusing on the frontline sales and support cohorts, and the third is a focus on replicating results via spotlighting social proof. 

Start with the managers emphasizing what you don’t inspect you won’t improve and teaching them how to use the tool to provide regular weekly coaching.  Get them to commit to
1) Helping to build the scorecards and defining the types and elements within each one
2) Listen to engagements and conduct regular coaching to identify strengths and weaknesses 
3) Growing the library based on what we agree as a team are the priorities and matching our Hall of Fame recordings to replicated wins thereby proving that it works.

Next, we need to get the field cohorts into a mindset of becoming true lifelong learners. We need to convince them to invest 20 minutes every single day to listen to themselves.  It'll be painful at first, letting them know we have yet to meet anyone who enjoys hearing their own voice (apart from those smug people who are annoyingly good at karaoke), but tell them that it is worth its weight in gold!  It creates something called 'Conscious Incompetence', which is the first step to improvement.  Awareness is the mother of change.  They will start to realize where they are going wrong and begin to improve.  Without this step they will keep making the same mistakes again, and again. They’ll also respond by turning up the volume on step three.   

And finally, step three is the secret sauce - identifying success stories where someone replicated a talk track and closed a deal.  Once identified, managers can start inspecting their team for executing same.  If we start with the you can’t improve what you don’t inspect, and then inject the continuous learning perspective while topping it off with recognition and contests that spotlight the social proof that this tool can in fact increase win rates and accelerate time to revenue, we’re bound to make this the most valuable tool in our tech stack.