SALES ENABLEMENT MANAGERS: How have you used Gong to track a rollout or initiative?


Userlevel 6
Badge +1

Have you used Gong to launch and track a rollout or initiative?  

 

Tell us how! 

 

Respond to the thread below with your best-kept secret about how you use Gong to launch and measure an initiative at your organization.

 

This contest is officially closed — but you can still share your tips and tricks with the Gong Community in the thread below! 

 

The first 5 people to respond with top-quality tips or best practices will win some exclusive vintage Gong swag. (Remember our old logo? Want it in your closet?)

 

And…one lucky winner will get 30 minutes on our CEO Amit Bendov’s calendar AND a feature on our LinkedIn page.

 

Here’s how to participate: 

  1. Write up a quick post (about a paragraph) about how you use Deals to support your coaching initiatives. You can also record a video, write a song, or get creative!

  2. For a second entry

    1. Click the three dots on the bottom right hand side of your post and hit “Link to URL” 

    2. Share your best practice with the link to your post and the hashtag #MyGongSecret on your LinkedIn. 

 

Submissions will be accepted until this Friday, July 29th at 12:00 AM CT, but if you want that vintage Gong swag, we don’t recommend waiting. 😉


13 replies

Userlevel 2
Badge +2

I’ve recently rolled out a weekly “Disco Call coaching session” with BDRs and AEs (different sessions for each audience). This coaching session consists of:

  • Selecting a call on Gong (it can be a good call or a not-so-good call -- both work)
  • Share this call among the audience, who then have to:
    • Listen to the call
    • Make comments / take notes
    • Score the call using Gong’s scorecards
  • During the coaching session, team members are asked to share what they liked/disliked about the call
  • Team members are also encouraged to share best practices on how they would handle such objection

What I’ve been noticing with this initiative is that both BDRs and AEs like to see what others are doing, and check if there is any talk track that might be working better for any of them. It also creates the interaction needed for a remote workforce, as we won’t be talking about targets there, so they fell that they can share their struggles with their colleagues and gather ideas and suggestions.

To bring a spike of competition to it, the best calls are being added to a Gong Library. As a result of wanting to have their calls added to the library, I often have a list of calls that team members share with me to have their calls reviewed.

As a sales enablement manager, I’m constantly checking whether everyone is still involved and interested in it, so I use the “Gong usage” report to check if people are really listening to the call selected. So far, I had no problems with low interest, but if I do face that in the future, I can bring that up with sales leaders so they can leverage the importance of these sessions.

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

@Isabella Grandchamp this is GOLD! I love how you use scorecards in this instance and how you use the Gong Library as an incentive for encouraging awesome calls. Thanks for sharing! Gong swag coming your way 🙂

Userlevel 1
Badge +2

We love doing mock calls in Gong and providing direct feedback right after the call, but also having other team members/managers listening and providing feedback to mock calls as if they were live situations. 

 

We recently rolled out a new internal process for onboarding enterprise clients.  We created a scenario and had SMEs from our AE, Success and Project Management team role play through the scenario for their internal prep calls, as well as mock calls with the “customer”.  To capture the calls, the team was instructed to include my personal email address in the Zoom meeting so Gong would record it.  

 

We’ve been able to use these examples to train the entire organization on best practices for the new process as well as lay the foundation for new hire onboarding training. Thanks Gong!  

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

@John Machak LOVE IT! Way to accomplish two goals with one initiative. 👏

Userlevel 2

I’ve found that incorporating the Gong Library into my Onboarding Program has been extremely helpful. 

1. They are able to listen to their peers have a real conversation. 2. It gives them something to look forward too. 

We also walk through the analytics of Gong and how we can track different calls, meetings and comments. Sometimes we overlook the simple things that Gong provides, so pointing those out have been very helpful for our team members.  Making sure notifications are turned on so that the coaching notifications are received can be easily overlooked.  

I also set up a weekly report to send me information on certain trackers so that I can quickly check what new hires are saying on client calls. 

Userlevel 3
Badge +1

My super stellar secret search (try saying that 5 times fast 😂) uses a mix of saved searches in Gong, aligned trackers, supporting scorecards and best practice library calls.

Earlier this year Marketing came out with new messaging aligned to our product categories and they also utilized supporting pitch decks. A challenge we came across with the power of Gong was that we noticed Sales was often using these product pitch decks as more of a detriment as they were speaking about our products and telling our customers/prospects “all about us” when the pitch decks were designed as a job aid to open the conversation about a customers needs. How I identified this challenge was through the following search:

  • In the “Slides” search section of the calls page I put in the title of the solution framework pitch deck slide and changed the duration of the slide in call to 5-30+ mins - I had the hypothesis that if a rep where to share a slide for over 5 mins on a customer call, they commonly where “speaking at” the customer rather than having an open ended conversation.
  • In the “Interaction” search I set the longest monologue to be between 3-20+ mins to identify long rants related to the shared content and set the talk ratio to be 30-100% to target calls that are more likely to be one sided conversations
  • This allowed me to have a strong sample size of calls that I could highlight to sales leaders to provide coaching and created this as a public saved filter so manager could easily apply these filters to their own teams.

On the other end, I used the following filters to identify best practice calls using the same slides, to give reps example calls to review as a frame of reference to work on open ended questioning and using the slides as a support, rather than a tool to run the call.

  • In the “Slides” search section of the calls page I put in the title of the solution framework pitch deck slide but kept the duration 0-30+ mins
  • In the “interaction” section I changed the talk ratio to < 65%, Interactivity 5-10 and patience to be > 0.7 - aligned to Gongs best practices but this also help me identify a subset of calls with strong back and forth between the rep and customer.
  • I would also utilize our discovery questions tracker to highlight strong open ended discovery on these calls.
  • This allowed me to have a strong sample size of best practice calls which I created both a public saved search for managers to utilize themselves while also creating a private saved search on a weekly basis that I get sent to my inbox which I then review on a bi-weekly basis to decide which calls I add to our “Solution Framework Discovery Best Practice” library folder.

This filter helped me also identify common trends for what best practices to follow which I then created a scorecard so managers can help score their reps for coaching and also highlight additional best practice calls which they @ mention me in the comments to bring to my attention.

A few managers have shared how these filters have drastically help them target their coaching but also simplify the process with the power of Gong.

Userlevel 3
Badge

I think I’m still in for the vintage Gong swag?? ;)) 

I use Gong for multiple enablement initiatives at Accredible: new product features and new pricing pitches, onboarding, training, coaching, competitive intel, customer feedback etc. Sharing one tip that helped me with several of the initiatives: we have recently rolled out MEDDPICC methodology at Accredible, Gong helped me and the sales leadership to track its adoption for every deal, this is how:

  • I have updated our deal board to include key MEDDPICC areas (set up as trackers):
  • Now when looking at the deal board everyone can see each key MEDDPICC areas for every deal. This is helpful in multiple ways: gives sales leadership focus to their coaching efforts, shows adoption of the methodology and indicates where further training is needed, for example, multithreading the deals is one area the data showed us needing a bit of work. 

I’ve learned this by completing the Program Manager Launch Certification and implemented straight away. If anyone is interested in setting this up in their organisation give me a shout :) 

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

@Viktorija you are certainly still in! Be on the lookout for a DM from me 🙂

Love that you implemented what you learned from Program Manager Launch Cert into your Sales Enablement practice! 👏

CC: @Kellie Petruzzelli 

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

I’ve recently rolled out a weekly “Disco Call coaching session” with BDRs and AEs (different sessions for each audience). This coaching session consists of:

  • Selecting a call on Gong (it can be a good call or a not-so-good call -- both work)
  • Share this call among the audience, who then have to:
    • Listen to the call
    • Make comments / take notes
    • Score the call using Gong’s scorecards
  • During the coaching session, team members are asked to share what they liked/disliked about the call
  • Team members are also encouraged to share best practices on how they would handle such objection

What I’ve been noticing with this initiative is that both BDRs and AEs like to see what others are doing, and check if there is any talk track that might be working better for any of them. It also creates the interaction needed for a remote workforce, as we won’t be talking about targets there, so they fell that they can share their struggles with their colleagues and gather ideas and suggestions.

To bring a spike of competition to it, the best calls are being added to a Gong Library. As a result of wanting to have their calls added to the library, I often have a list of calls that team members share with me to have their calls reviewed.

As a sales enablement manager, I’m constantly checking whether everyone is still involved and interested in it, so I use the “Gong usage” report to check if people are really listening to the call selected. So far, I had no problems with low interest, but if I do face that in the future, I can bring that up with sales leaders so they can leverage the importance of these sessions.

Following up here to add these Gong Academy resources for scorecards, organizing your call library, and data, written by Gong Customer Training Specialist @Chris Maironis:

Create Scorecards
Interested in improving how your team gives feedback on recorded conversations? This course will walk you through how (and when) to create scorecards.
https://academy.gong.io/create-scorecards

Organize the Call Library
The Call Library houses curated call recordings from members of your revenue org. In this course, you'll learn best practices for organizing the call library to set your team up for success.
https://academy.gong.io/organize-the-call-library

Seize the Data
Most of the time users can get what's needed right in Gong, but on the rare occasion that additional number crunching is needed, try using the export feature.
https://academy.gong.io/seize-the-data

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

We love doing mock calls in Gong and providing direct feedback right after the call, but also having other team members/managers listening and providing feedback to mock calls as if they were live situations. 

 

We recently rolled out a new internal process for onboarding enterprise clients.  We created a scenario and had SMEs from our AE, Success and Project Management team role play through the scenario for their internal prep calls, as well as mock calls with the “customer”.  To capture the calls, the team was instructed to include my personal email address in the Zoom meeting so Gong would record it.  

 

We’ve been able to use these examples to train the entire organization on best practices for the new process as well as lay the foundation for new hire onboarding training. Thanks Gong!  

Following up here to add this Gong Academy resource for decreasing onboarding time, written by Gong Customer Training Specialist @Chris Maironis:

Decrease Onboarding Time
Leverage Gong to streamline your onboarding process and get new hires ramped faster. Get started to learn how!
https://academy.gong.io/decrease-onboarding-time?reg=1

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

I’ve found that incorporating the Gong Library into my Onboarding Program has been extremely helpful. 

1. They are able to listen to their peers have a real conversation. 2. It gives them something to look forward too. 

We also walk through the analytics of Gong and how we can track different calls, meetings and comments. Sometimes we overlook the simple things that Gong provides, so pointing those out have been very helpful for our team members.  Making sure notifications are turned on so that the coaching notifications are received can be easily overlooked.  

I also set up a weekly report to send me information on certain trackers so that I can quickly check what new hires are saying on client calls. 

Following up here to add these Gong Academy resources for building your call library and coaching, written by Gong Customer Training Specialist @Chris Maironis:

Build the Ultimate Call Library
Every sales rep wants access to the best and most effective talk tracks to help them learn and be more effective during the sales process.
https://academy.gong.io/build-the-ultimate-course-library-video

Coaching: Review the Conversations
Let’s explore the best places to find call insights so you can provide constructive feedback.
https://academy.gong.io/coaching-review-the-game-tape

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

My super stellar secret search (try saying that 5 times fast 😂) uses a mix of saved searches in Gong, aligned trackers, supporting scorecards and best practice library calls.

Earlier this year Marketing came out with new messaging aligned to our product categories and they also utilized supporting pitch decks. A challenge we came across with the power of Gong was that we noticed Sales was often using these product pitch decks as more of a detriment as they were speaking about our products and telling our customers/prospects “all about us” when the pitch decks were designed as a job aid to open the conversation about a customers needs. How I identified this challenge was through the following search:

  • In the “Slides” search section of the calls page I put in the title of the solution framework pitch deck slide and changed the duration of the slide in call to 5-30+ mins - I had the hypothesis that if a rep where to share a slide for over 5 mins on a customer call, they commonly where “speaking at” the customer rather than having an open ended conversation.
  • In the “Interaction” search I set the longest monologue to be between 3-20+ mins to identify long rants related to the shared content and set the talk ratio to be 30-100% to target calls that are more likely to be one sided conversations
  • This allowed me to have a strong sample size of calls that I could highlight to sales leaders to provide coaching and created this as a public saved filter so manager could easily apply these filters to their own teams.

On the other end, I used the following filters to identify best practice calls using the same slides, to give reps example calls to review as a frame of reference to work on open ended questioning and using the slides as a support, rather than a tool to run the call.

  • In the “Slides” search section of the calls page I put in the title of the solution framework pitch deck slide but kept the duration 0-30+ mins
  • In the “interaction” section I changed the talk ratio to < 65%, Interactivity 5-10 and patience to be > 0.7 - aligned to Gongs best practices but this also help me identify a subset of calls with strong back and forth between the rep and customer.
  • I would also utilize our discovery questions tracker to highlight strong open ended discovery on these calls.
  • This allowed me to have a strong sample size of best practice calls which I created both a public saved search for managers to utilize themselves while also creating a private saved search on a weekly basis that I get sent to my inbox which I then review on a bi-weekly basis to decide which calls I add to our “Solution Framework Discovery Best Practice” library folder.

This filter helped me also identify common trends for what best practices to follow which I then created a scorecard so managers can help score their reps for coaching and also highlight additional best practice calls which they @ mention me in the comments to bring to my attention.

A few managers have shared how these filters have drastically help them target their coaching but also simplify the process with the power of Gong.

Following up here to add these Gong Academy resources for implementing methodologies and initiatives, digging deeper into calls, and using Gong to launch + track strategic initiatives, written by Gong Customer Training Specialist @Chris Maironis:

Implementing Sales Methodologies and Initiatives with Gong
Getting a prospect from stranger to customer is a journey, but luckily many people who have come before you have developed the roadmaps and strategies you need to guarantee a successful passage. Sales Methodologies like the ones included in these playbooks have become tried and true frameworks for sales teams to consistently meet quota and ensure a positive sales experience for the customer.
https://academy.gong.io/implementing-sales-methodologies-and-initiatives-with-gong

Calls - Digging Deeper
After you find a conversation of interest, explore it further to find the most important moments using the call review page.
https://academy.gong.io/calls-digging-deeper/1057597

Bet Big - How to Use Gong to Launch, Track, and Reinforce Strategic Initiatives
In this one-hour recorded session with the Gong community working in sales enablement, sales ops, and PMM, you’ll learn how to use Gong to iterate on your strategic initiatives so they get exceptional results.
https://academy.gong.io/bet-big-how-to-use-gong-to-launch-track-and-reinforce-strategic-initiatives

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

I think I’m still in for the vintage Gong swag?? ;)) 

I use Gong for multiple enablement initiatives at Accredible: new product features and new pricing pitches, onboarding, training, coaching, competitive intel, customer feedback etc. Sharing one tip that helped me with several of the initiatives: we have recently rolled out MEDDPICC methodology at Accredible, Gong helped me and the sales leadership to track its adoption for every deal, this is how:

  • I have updated our deal board to include key MEDDPICC areas (set up as trackers):
  • Now when looking at the deal board everyone can see each key MEDDPICC areas for every deal. This is helpful in multiple ways: gives sales leadership focus to their coaching efforts, shows adoption of the methodology and indicates where further training is needed, for example, multithreading the deals is one area the data showed us needing a bit of work. 

I’ve learned this by completing the Program Manager Launch Certification and implemented straight away. If anyone is interested in setting this up in their organisation give me a shout :) 

Following up here to add these relevant Gong Academy resources from Gong Customer Training Specialist @Chris Maironis:

Customize Trackers
Mastering trackers functionality empowers you to customize Gong to support desired business outcomes. In this course, you can expect to learn the what, why, and how of trackers as well as some best practice examples we've seen in the wild.
https://academy.gong.io/customize-trackers

Customize Deal Boards
Ready to gain visibility into the health of your team's opportunities? Learn how to customize Deal Boards to align them with your business needs.
https://academy.gong.io/customize-deal-boards

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